Turkmen documents come to our Istanbul offices with students, workers, spouses and construction and energy companies. There is one thing about Turkmen files that every client needs to know before spending any money, and almost nobody is told it in advance. We have handled Turkmen work with sworn translators since 1992.
SWORN TURKMEN TRANSLATION IN ISTANBUL
TURKMENISTAN DOES NOT ISSUE APOSTILLES
Turkmenistan is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention. No office in Ashgabat can put an apostille on your document, however often you are told to go and get one.
What is required instead is the older chain of legalisation: the issuing authority certifies the document, then the Turkmen foreign ministry, then the Turkish embassy or consulate there. Only a document that has been through all three steps is treated as valid by a Turkish office.
And the order matters. The chain has to be completed inside Turkmenistan, before the document travels. It cannot be assembled afterwards from Istanbul, which is why a document that arrives here unstamped usually has to go back to a relative to be walked through the offices again — weeks, sometimes months.
Send us a photograph before anyone starts queuing and we will tell you exactly which stamps your document needs.
CLOSE TO TURKISH IS NOT THE SAME AS TURKISH
Turkmen and Turkish are related, and a Turkish reader can follow parts of a certificate. That does not make the document usable: a foreign-language document in a Turkish file needs a translation by a translator sworn before a Turkish notary, however readable it looks.
The resemblance is also a trap in the other direction. Institution names, degree titles, court decision types and property terms do not map onto their Turkish look-alikes, and translating them by resemblance misdescribes what the issuing body actually is.
Our Turkmen translators work by document type and describe each issuing authority for what it is, rather than reaching for the nearest familiar Turkish word.
THE LETTERS, AND WHICH ALPHABET YOUR DOCUMENT USES
Turkmenistan moved from Cyrillic to a Latin alphabet in the 1990s. Documents from before that period are in Cyrillic, and the text is often Russian rather than Turkmen; newer ones are in Latin script.
The Turkmen Latin alphabet contains letters Turkish does not have, and one of them causes real damage: ý is a separate letter from y, so Ýazmyrat and Yazmyrat are not the same spelling. The letters ä, ž and ň disappear just as easily when a name is typed into a Turkish form.
We reproduce the letters exactly as printed on each document, anchor the whole file to the Latin spelling in your passport, and show any variant beside it so that a Turkish clerk sees one person rather than two.
DOCUMENTS WE TRANSLATE MOST OFTEN
- Civil status: birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates, single status letters
- Education: school certificates, diplomas, transcripts, course descriptions, recognition (denklik) files
- Official: passports, identity cards, driving licences, criminal record certificates, residence and work permit dossiers
- Legal: powers of attorney, court judgments, inheritance and custody papers, property documents
- Commercial: company registrations, contracts, tenders, invoices, transport and customs documents
- Construction and energy: project documentation, technical specifications, conformity certificates
We provide consecutive interpreters for notary, land registry and marriage office 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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