Sworn Translation in Van

Border trade is a business conducted on paper

What sets Van apart from the other provinces of the region in translation terms is that it stands at the centre of the overland trade opening into Iran. The visible face of that trade is lorries and containers; the unseen face is the file behind every shipment. When a load crosses the border, the consignment note, the invoice, the declaration of origin, the insurance policy and, where the goods call for them, product-specific certificates all travel with it. Some of these documents are drawn up in Turkish, some arrive in Persian from the other side, and each party needs a copy to put before its own customs authority. On top of that come the framework contracts between importer and exporter, the distributorship agreements and the payment correspondence. The bulk of the work that reaches us from Van comes out of this commercial chain.

The documents that recur in a commercial file

The most frequent are transport and dispatch papers, the commercial invoice and packing list, declarations of origin, distributorship and agency contracts, company registry documents and signature circulars. In these, carrying the company name, the address and the tax number across exactly is the essential thing; the smallest discrepancy leads to the document failing to match at the customs authority on the other side. A second group comes from the service sector: the medical reports, residence papers and identity documents of visitors who come to the region for treatment, shopping or tourism. The third group is personal – marriage, civil registry and education documents; family ties on both sides of the border produce these files steadily.

The points we watch in a shipment file can be set out as follows:

• The company name, address and tax number must be written in the same form on every document; even a slight difference breaks the match.
• Product descriptions must remain identical across the invoice, the packing list and the certificate.
• Dates and delivery term abbreviations must not be interpreted freely; whatever the source says is what is carried across.
• A separate copy must be prepared for each party to submit to its own authority; one copy is often not enough.

Why Persian is the first language here

The demand for Persian in Van is not a matter of preference; it follows from Persian being the working language of the trade itself. The buyer, the customs broker and the bank on the other side operate in Persian; the binding copy of a contract is more often than not signed in that language, and it is that text which is consulted when a dispute arises. Arabic comes up more with the third parties to the region’s trade, with shipments reaching down into the Middle East and in the administrative paperwork of settled families. Kurdish, as a language widely used in everyday communication in the region, comes before us in part of the spoken meetings and the correspondence between the parties. You can check which form of certification is required for which country on the countries page.

A delivery routine that runs to shipment times

In border trade the translation is generally wanted not “by tomorrow” but “by today”; the vehicle is on the road and the appointment has been booked. With files from Van we therefore prefer to issue the electronically signed copy first and send it the same day, with the wet-signed original following on by courier. You upload the document from wherever you are, the price and the delivery date appear at once, and the sworn signature and, where required, notarisation are completed at our office in Ankara Kızılay. We have no branch in Van; the process runs remotely from start to finish, and that shortens the time spent at the border. Telling us at the outset how urgent the job is has a direct bearing on the delivery plan.

For those who work with us regularly

If you are sending the same product to the same buyer with the same set of documents, there is no sense in building the job from scratch on every shipment. We draw up a list of agreed renderings for company names, product descriptions and contract wording and use the same list on later files; this brings down both the time taken and the risk of error. Send your first file through the quote form; the per-page rates you can see by language pair on the pricing page.

This page is for general information; our office is based in Ankara Kızılay and there are no branches in other provinces. Before deciding, it is worth consulting the authority’s own publication.