German translator

We deliver Standard German (de-DE) by default, in line with the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung. Austrian German (de-AT, ÖWB conventions) and Swiss Standard German (de-CH, without ß) are available where your target market requires them; we confirm the variant in the quote based on your target country. Mixing German spelling with Swiss conventions — or German terms in an Austrian document — is the most common reason a translation reads as out of place, 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). For documents bound for German authorities or courts (§ 142 ZPO), 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, not as a membership or certification of Ecrivus.

Common document types include supply and employment contracts, annual reports, technical manuals, personal documents (birth certificates, diplomas and transcripts, Handelsregister extracts), notarial deeds and commercial correspondence with the DACH region. UK-specific cases we handle often are Home Office and UKVI immigration documents, university admissions assessed by UK ENIC, court documents and medical reports. 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, which matters most on large technical manuals, and a translation memory keeps follow-up work aligned and lowers the cost over time.

Yes. We coordinate regional variants of German per project. Four main variants are in common use — Standard German, Austrian German, Swiss Standard German and Belgian German (see the variant strip on this page). We confirm the variant you need in the quote, so the receiving audience recognises the spelling, lexicon and terminology as their own.

A German translation agency takes the coordination off your hands. We select the specialist who fits your document and sector, choose the right DACH variant, arrange certification, notarisation or legalisation where a German or UK authority requires it, and have the work checked by a second reviewer. You keep one point of contact for variant, terminology, scheduling and delivery, all under a single quote — useful when you need manuals, contracts and annual reports for the same German market to stay consistent. 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.