Sworn Translation in Yalova

What puts Yalova on the translation map is not its size but the investor profile it draws. Small though the province is, there is intense activity in property sales to foreign nationals and in the citizenship applications that follow from them. This gathers the greater part of the files coming from the province under a single heading: sets of personal documents.

One consequence of that profile is that almost every document arriving has been issued by a foreign authority. The work, in other words, is not a matter of carrying a Turkish document into another language; it is a matter of bringing documents drawn up under different record systems into a form Turkish authorities will understand. That calls for a different kind of expertise: knowing the document types, the institution names and the logic of record-keeping in the country of origin.

The document set in applications through investment

The application process a foreign investor begins in Türkiye moves forward on personal records rather than on the property itself. A typical set contains the passport, the birth record, the marriage record, a divorce decree where there is one, the children’s birth certificates, the criminal record certificate and the declaration of address. The set grows as the number of family members grows; for a family of four, reaching fifteen or twenty documents is nothing out of the ordinary.

In these sets the most critical question is consistency of names. The Latin-script spelling in the passport may differ from the spelling of the birth record held in the country of origin. Rather than quietly correcting that difference in translation, we settle with the applicant which spelling is to be taken as the basis. Having the same name appear in the same form on every document removes the point at which the process most often stumbles.

Why Arabic, Russian and English here

The three languages that stand out in Yalova follow directly from the buyer profile. Arabic with the family investors coming from countries in the region; Russian with buyers from the northern market; and English both as the common language of communication and as the language in which the documents of third-country nationals arrive. On the thermal tourism and ornamental plant side, commercial contracts and product documents run in English. Which chain of certification is looked for on the documents of which country, we have gathered together on the countries page.

Document	Where it comes from	The detail watched
Passport information page	The applicant	Taking the spelling of the name as the reference
Birth and marriage record	Civil registry authority of the country of origin	Date format and place names
Criminal record certificate	Judicial authority of the country of origin	Period of validity
Court judgment	Foreign court	The line between the summary and the operative ruling
Title deed and sale documents	Turkish authorities	Exact rendering of parcel and area details

Not translating the same set twice

A waste often seen in investment files is the same document being translated over and over at different stages. Preparing the family set once, with a consistent scheme of terms and names, means that at later stages you need only the newly added items translated. Sending files in a single batch, and putting the chosen name forms on record, matter for that reason.

Applications carried out under a power of attorney

A good proportion of buyers in Yalova are not permanently in Türkiye; the formalities are mostly carried out through a representative. In translation terms that means two further documents: the power of attorney itself and the representative’s identity documents. If the power of attorney was drawn up abroad it is translated into Turkish; if it was drawn up in Türkiye for use abroad, into the other language.

The most critical part of a power of attorney is the section listing the powers granted. Powers such as purchasing property, opening a bank account, obtaining a tax number and acting as representative before official bodies are written out one by one; if one of them is missing, that transaction cannot be carried out. None of these items is summarised in translation; each is rendered in turn. To summarise is, in effect, to narrow the scope of the power of attorney.

Another point is the duration of the power of attorney and the question of revocation. Where one has been drawn up for a fixed term, the date details and the wording on validity have to be preserved exactly. These details look small, but in title deed transactions they are the most common reason for a file being sent back.

Sending from Yalova

We have no branch in the province; the whole procedure is completed at the office in Ankara. For foreign applicants this is generally no obstacle, because the documents are shared digitally in any case and the electronically signed copy comes back the same day. The wet-signed copy goes to your address by courier, for submission to the authority concerned. The soundest way is to upload the whole family set in one go and see the price and the delivery date from the start.

The information here is for guidance; in a process carried out remotely the original document may be required. Settling from the outset the form the authority asks for saves further work later on.