French translator

We deliver Metropolitan French (fr-FR) per the Académie française by default. Belgian French (fr-BE), with septante/nonante and its own court terminology, Swiss French (fr-CH) and Quebec French (fr-CA, OQLF-regulated) are available; we confirm the variant in the quote based on your target country and audience. A document for a Belgian court delivered in the Paris standard reads as foreign to its intended reader, so we hold to a single variant throughout.

The UK has no sworn-translator institute, so there is no "sworn translator" as a legal office here. For official acceptance we provide certified translation: a signed and dated statement of accuracy from the translator or the agency, with our contact details. Where a body asks for more, this can be escalated to notarisation by a solicitor or notary public, or to an apostille or legalisation through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). We confirm in the quote which level your receiving authority requires.

We work with native specialist translators and reference the recognised UK professional bodies — the ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting), the CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists) and, for interpreting, the NRPSI (National Register of Public Service Interpreters). These are bodies of reference for the profession; we name them so you can see the standard the work is held to.

Common document types include contracts and distribution agreements, annual reports, technical manuals, pharmaceutical regulatory submissions, personal documents (birth certificates, diplomas and transcripts, Companies House extracts), notarial deeds and commercial correspondence. UK-specific cases we handle often are Home Office and UKVI immigration documents, university admissions assessed by UK ENIC, HMCTS court documents and NHS referrals. We confirm the approach and any certification per document in the quote.

On working days you receive a quote within 1 hour. The lead time for the translation itself depends on document type, volume, language pair and any required certification, and is confirmed in the quote. For tight deadlines we confirm a workable rush schedule up front rather than promising a fixed turnaround.

We combine native specialist translators with a structured QA layer: a terminology list, a style guide and a second review where the legal field, risk profile or volume requires it. CAT tools (Trados, memoQ, Phrase TMS) keep terminology consistent across volume and repeated content — including French accents and spacing rules — and a translation memory keeps follow-up work aligned and lowers the cost over time.

For legal French translation — contracts, judgments, articles of association, notarial deeds — we pair you with a translator who has a legal background and match terminology to the relevant legal system, distinguishing French law from Belgian, Swiss and Quebec conventions. Our legal-translation page goes deeper into certification, the closing statement of accuracy and the differences between these jurisdictions. See [legal translation](/en/services/legal-translation/).

A French translation agency takes the coordination off your hands. We select the specialist who fits your document, sector and Francophone target market, arrange certification, notarisation or legalisation where an authority requires it, and have the work checked by a second reviewer. You keep one point of contact for variant (fr-FR, fr-BE, fr-CH or fr-CA), terminology, scheduling and delivery, all under a single quote. A skilled freelance translator does excellent work too; the difference an agency adds is bringing those moving parts together so you are not managing them separately.