Must handwriting, seals and signatures on a document be translated too?
Yes. A certified translation must cover all text on the page, including stamps and handwritten notes, with bracketed labels showing what is a seal and what is handwriting.
In-depth Answer
The premise of a certified translation is that a reader without the source language receives exactly what a source-language reader would.
Everything textual on the page must therefore be conveyed: the Garuda emblem, agency seals, certified-true-copy endorsements, officials' handwritten notes, stamped reference numbers.
Accepted practice is a square-bracket label — seal, signature, handwritten note — followed by the rendering, making clear which part of the page each string came from and that the translator did not invent it.
Anything illegible should be marked as such rather than guessed; receiving agencies accept that annotation but not unverifiable content.
Laying the translation out to mirror the original's positions also speeds up verification considerably.
Related questions
Documents most Australia visa applicants translate into English
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