Ulster-Scots translator

Ulster-Scots (Ullans or Scotch) is a West Germanic Anglic variety descended from the Lowland Scots of Scotland and spoken mainly in Northern Ireland and East Donegal. It is not corrupted English, and it is certainly not the same as Irish, which is a Celtic language. We assign a specialist translator who treats Ulster-Scots as a language form in its own right.

The UK has no sworn-translator institute, and there is no separate certification route for Ulster-Scots itself. Where an authority requires certification, it runs in practice through English — the official language of the underlying source document — as a signed statement of accuracy. 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 route your receiving authority requires.

The most common are heritage and museum texts, tourism content, cultural and literary publications, and personal documents with a Northern Irish background. As an Ulster-Scots translation agency we confirm the approach, the spelling convention and any certification per project in the quote.

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

Ulster-Scots has no fully standardised official spelling; authors and publications follow different conventions, and the Ulster-Scots Agency provides reference material. We agree up front per project which convention we follow, matched to your publication or audience.

An Ulster-Scots translation agency takes the coordination off your hands. We select the specialist who knows Ulster-Scots and the Northern Irish heritage, agree the spelling convention, arrange certification through English where an authority requires it, and have the work checked by a second reviewer. You keep one point of contact for register, 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.