Documents that need certified translation — six families

Section 46 of the Thai Civil Procedure Code requires documents submitted to Thai courts to be in Thai; where a document is in a foreign language, the court may order the party to file a Thai translation certified as accurate by the translator. A litigation translation is therefore not a supporting document — it is evidence that the opposing party and the bench can scrutinise throughout the proceedings.

The translation must preserve the full structure of the original: letterhead, case number, dates, signatures, seals, footnotes and struck-through text. Where the original is illegible, the translator marks the exact position as illegible rather than guessing. Adding or omitting even a short phrase gives the other side grounds to challenge the evidential weight of the document.

Civil status records are issued by district registration offices under the Department of Provincial Administration. To be used abroad they must be translated into English and legalised by the Legalisation Division of the Department of Consular Affairs. That endorsement certifies the translation against the original — it does not certify the facts recorded in the document.

The most common failures are a spelling that differs from the passport, a title that no longer matches the person's current status, and official place names translated inconsistently with their formal English form, including districts renamed after the record was issued. Bring passport copies for everyone named in the document so the translation follows one spelling.

Thai education documents are issued by public or private institutions, and that distinction affects the process. Public institutions issue documents with seals and authorised signatures that consular officers can verify; some private institutions also need a supporting certificate from their regulator. Ask the issuing institution which format to request before you start.

Transcripts are the easiest document in this family to get wrong: course codes, course titles, credits, the grading scale and graduation criteria all matter. The translator must not convert Thai grades into the destination country's scale; values are kept as printed, together with the full grading-scale legend. Credential equivalence is decided by the receiving authority, not by the translator.

Company affidavits and business registry records are issued by the Department of Business Development, Ministry of Commerce. In practice they have a short acceptance window because they show status as at the extraction date, so most foreign counterparties and banks require a fresh extract. Check the recipient's rule before translation so the document does not expire mid-process.

Corporate translations must keep the registered English company name exactly, including the entity suffix. Where an English name is already registered, it is never re-translated: banks and foreign registrars match it against other records such as VAT registration or signed contracts.

Visa bundles are assessed as a whole rather than document by document. Names, dates, addresses, job titles and financial figures must agree across every item, so the translation has to use one consistent set of terms and spellings throughout the bundle instead of being produced file by file.

Police clearance certificates are issued by the Special Branch Bureau of the Royal Thai Police. Applicants should confirm the procedure and supporting documents with the issuing authority directly, since requirements differ for applicants inside and outside Thailand, and many embassies also set an acceptance age for the certificate.

Medical records are sensitive documents that drive clinical and financial decisions. Translations must preserve diagnoses, drug names, dosages, units and laboratory reference ranges exactly as printed. Converting units or adjusting values to the destination country's convention is clinical interpretation and falls outside translation.

Drug names keep the generic name shown in the original; where a brand name appears, it is retained, with the generic name in brackets only when the document itself identifies it. Translators do not add medication information absent from the source, because these records support ongoing treatment and claim assessment.