Have death certificate translated

There many things to be taken care of after a death: a funeral and the inheritance need to be arranged, and contracts for the deceased person’s home, for the telephone connection, and for several insurance policies must be cancelled. Normally, the person making the request must submit an official document confirming the death to the registry office, the probate court or to insurance companies. If the individual passed away in a foreign country, they may run into some issues, however: the relevant persons may not understand the content of the original certificate or they may not recognise a normal translation. To prevent this from happening, you can place a direct order online with us for the professional translation and certification of all records and documents pertaining to the deceased individual – and avoid having to make complicated applications.

Translations of death certificates are rarely required. It is usually necessary when a member of the family dies while travelling abroad. In this case, the death is usually certified in the official language of the country where the person died. However, formalities arising for those left behind, such as cancelling contracts, need to be completed in the home country where it’s normal for registry offices, probate courts and insurance companies to only accept certified translations of foreign death certificates.

Just as with a marriage certificate, passport or a will, there are certain things that generally need to be taken into consideration for a foreign death certificate: correct transfer of the content, translation by sworn translators, and signed and stamped certification. Another special consideration also has to be made: death certificates from abroad may contain important handwritten notes, for instance, which must be translated just like written text in order for the certificate to be recognised by a German registry office or other German public authorities, etc.

To always play it safe, we generally recommend that you ask the competent authority in advance if a certified translation or a simple translation must be provided. And if you require a certified translation, you can count on our support: we translate and certify death certificates from English, French and other languages into German and from German into a wide variety of languages.

Taking care of a funeral and administrative formalities shortly after the death of a loved one is difficult, and we want to help you as best we can in these circumstances. In most cases, officially translated foreign documents are accepted by registry offices, public authorities and probate courts without any objections and everything can be handled with ease. To ensure this happens, our service has been certified three times in accordance with ISO standards: our translation services (ISO 17100:2015), our quality management (ISO-9001:2015) and our information security (ISO/IEC 27001:2013).