Persian work comes to our Istanbul offices mainly from Iranian clients settling, studying, marrying, buying property or setting up companies in Turkey, and from Turkish firms trading across the eastern border. Persian documents follow rules of their own, and the two described below decide whether your file is accepted or sent back. We have been doing this work with sworn translators since 1992.
SWORN PERSIAN TRANSLATION IN ISTANBUL
IRAN DOES NOT ISSUE APOSTILLES
Iran is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, and neither is Afghanistan. No office in Tehran or Kabul can put an apostille on your document, whatever you may have been told.
What is required instead is the older legalisation chain: the issuing authority certifies the document, then the country’s foreign ministry, then the Turkish embassy or consulate there. Only after that will a Turkish office treat the paper as valid.
The important part is the order. The chain must be completed in the issuing country, before you travel. It cannot be assembled afterwards from Istanbul, and a document that arrives here without it usually has to be sent back to a relative to be walked through the offices again.
Send us a photograph before you begin and we will tell you exactly which stamps your document needs.
THE SHENASNAMEH IS NOT JUST A BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Iran does not issue a single-sheet birth certificate. Identity is recorded in the shenasnameh, a booklet that follows a person for life: the birth entry is on the first pages, and marriage, divorce, children and eventually death are added later.
This matters in two ways. First, translating only the first page loses the very entries a Turkish marriage office or court is looking for — we translate every page that carries an entry, and say clearly which pages are blank. Second, an old booklet can carry corrections and stamps that need to be described rather than skipped over.
The newer national identity card (karte melli) does not replace the booklet for these purposes.
SOLAR HIJRI DATES AND PERSIAN NUMERALS
Iranian documents are dated in the Solar Hijri calendar, whose new year falls at the spring equinox rather than in January. A date such as 1370/05/12 is not a typing error and is not the Gregorian calendar with the century removed; converted carelessly it moves a birth date by a year or more, and a birth date that disagrees with the passport stops the application.
The digits themselves are written in Persian numerals, which are read from left to right even though the text around them runs right to left — a common source of transposed figures in amateur translations.
We convert every date to the Gregorian calendar, leave the original beside it, and check identity numbers digit by digit against the passport.
Names need the same discipline: Persian script leaves short vowels unwritten, so one name has several defensible Latin spellings. We fix yours to the passport spelling and hold it across the whole file.
DOCUMENTS WE TRANSLATE MOST OFTEN
- Civil status: shenasnameh booklets, national identity cards, marriage and divorce records, single status letters
- Education: diplomas, transcripts, course descriptions, recognition (denklik) files for Turkish universities
- Official: passports, driving licences, police certificates, residence and work permit dossiers
- Legal: powers of attorney, court judgments, inheritance papers, property and company deeds
- Commercial: company registrations, articles of association, contracts, invoices, customs and transport papers
- Medical: reports and test results for treatment in Turkish hospitals
We supply consecutive interpreters for notary, land registry, marriage office and hospital appointments — property purchases and marriages require you to attend in person — and simultaneous teams for conferences and trade fairs.
Other languages are listed on our translation languages page.
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