Client details are withheld. Neither party to the conversation is identified, the relationship the evidence supports is not described, and nothing from the messages themselves appears below.

Table of Contents hide

“The translation has already been made — please review it”

This was a returning client, the kind of customer you instinctively want to say yes to. His request was simple: the attached file was a WhatsApp conversation written in Urdu with English words mixed in, an English translation had already been made, and he wanted us to review it.

Six pages, Urdu into English, certification recorded as Home Office (UKVI). The document type was “Other”, which for a chat log is the only honest option on the form. The purpose was a visa application. The upload was a Word file of pasted screenshots.

It was a reasonable request, cheaply framed, from a good client. And it asked for the one thing a certified translator cannot do.

What a certification actually promises

A certified translation is not a quality rating. It is a personal statement, signed and dated by a named translator, that this English is a true and accurate rendering of that source document. Its weight in a UKVI file comes entirely from the fact that an identifiable person stands behind it and can be contacted about it.

That has a consequence most clients have never had explained. A translator cannot certify a translation they did not produce — not because a handbook forbids it, but because the statement would not be true. You cannot assert that a rendering is accurate unless you have checked every line of it against the source yourself. And once you have checked every line of six pages of code-switched chat against the source, you have done the work of translating it. The word “review” does not hide a shortcut.

So there were exactly two honest options. We translate it ourselves and certify our own work. Or we take his draft as a starting point, check every line against the source, correct what needs correcting and certify the result as ours — which costs what translating it costs, because it is the same labour, and which may leave the finished text looking quite different from the draft.

What we would not do is read it over, pronounce it fine and attach a statement of accuracy to someone else’s work. That produces a document that looks like a certified translation and is not one. If it is ever tested — in a query, an interview or an appeal — the person holding it is the one exposed. Saying yes to the cheap version would have sold him a risk he could not see.

Three kinds of text inside one conversation

The material itself was demanding. He described it precisely: Urdu with English inside it. In practice, chat in this corridor is three things at once.

Urdu in Urdu script

This is translated in the ordinary way, with attention to the informal register, abbreviations and the private shorthand that messaging between two people always develops.

English typed as English

Words the parties themselves chose in English are reproduced exactly as typed and marked as original English. A caseworker needs to know which words came from the parties and which came from the translator. Flattening everything into uniform English erases that distinction and makes the whole exchange read as if one hand wrote it.

Roman Urdu

A very large share of informal South Asian messaging is Urdu typed in the Latin alphabet, with spelling improvised by each writer. It has to be recognised as Urdu, read as Urdu and translated — not left standing because it already uses familiar letters. Leaving it untranslated is the commonest failure on this kind of evidence, and the one most likely to leave a line looking like nonsense to an English reader.

A chat log is a structure, not a paragraph

Each message has a sender, a timestamp and a place in a sequence. Some quote earlier messages, some are forwarded, and some are placeholders where a voice note, a photo or a deleted message used to be. Much of the evidential value of a conversation lies in that shape: who said what, when, and in what order. A translation that turns it into continuous prose has thrown most of that away. Every structural element has to be represented, including the ones with no words in them, which are described rather than translated.

There was also something that needed saying to the client rather than solving quietly. He had chosen which screenshots to include, which is entirely his right. But timestamps make gaps visible, and a reader who can see a conversation jump forward is invited to wonder what is in the gap. A short, complete sequence is often stronger than a long edited one. We translate everything we are given, in full, and we do not drop a message because it looks unhelpful.

Finally, the practical layer. Screenshots pasted into a Word file are images — often compressed, sometimes cropped. Anything not legible cannot be translated, and the honest response is to mark it illegible rather than infer it from context. Chat is exactly the material where guessing feels safest and is least safe.

How the job was actually done

We answered the request plainly before quoting. We explained what a certification is, why it cannot be attached to work we did not do, and set out the two options with the real consequence of each, including that the revision route costs what a translation costs. We did not invent a cheaper-sounding third option, because there is not one that can honestly be certified.

He chose the revision route, so his draft became a starting point rather than the deliverable. Every line was checked against the screenshot it came from. Where his rendering was right, it stayed. Where it was wrong, it was corrected. Where it had smoothed over a Roman Urdu passage or reworded something typed in English, it was put back.

We fixed a convention for the three kinds of text and applied it across all six pages: Urdu script translated; original English reproduced verbatim and marked; Roman Urdu translated with the typed original shown, so the reader sees what was on the screen.

The structure was reproduced. Each message carries its sender label and timestamp as displayed. Quoted and forwarded messages are shown as such. Voice notes, images and deleted-message placeholders are described in place, so the sequence has no silent holes. Anything illegible was marked illegible, and nothing was reconstructed from context.

We raised the visible gaps with him — not to tell him what to submit, which is not our decision, but so that the decision was his and informed. Then we certified our own finished work with a signed, dated statement of accuracy from a translator independent of the applicant.

What the client received

One certified English translation of six pages of chat evidence, with every line verified against its own screenshot rather than taken on trust from the draft; Urdu script, original English and Roman Urdu handled by one stated convention throughout; sender labels and timestamps as displayed; quoted, forwarded and deleted messages and non-text items represented in place; everything illegible declared; nothing omitted; and a statement of accuracy covering work that was genuinely ours to certify.

The conversation could now be read end to end, in sequence, with the parties’ own English visible as their own and no gaps created by the translation. What UKVI decides about an application is UKVI’s decision, and nothing here predicts it. What was in our hands was making sure the client was not holding a document that merely looked certified.

Other files on this site raise the same tension between what a client asks for and what the reader needs — see how we handled a nine-page Belgian visa file written in two languages.

Chat evidence and existing translations: common questions

Can you certify a translation I or a friend have already done?

Not as it stands. A certification states that the certifying translator’s rendering is accurate, so we can only certify work we have checked line by line against the source and taken responsibility for. We can use your draft as a starting point, but the result is our translation.

Will my own draft reduce the price?

Rarely by much, because checking every line is the same work as translating. It is still worth sending: it shows how you read the conversation and sometimes explains private shorthand a translator could not otherwise know.

Should the English words in my messages be translated?

No. Words typed in English should appear exactly as typed and be marked as original English. That distinction is part of the evidence.

Is it better to send the whole conversation or just the important parts?

That is your decision, but timestamps make gaps visible. A short unbroken exchange often reads better than a long edited one, and we will translate whatever you send in full.

For immigration paperwork more generally, see our certified legal translation services and our spouse visa document translation page. The FAQs explain what a UK statement of accuracy contains. If you are not sure your evidence is usable as it stands, upload it for a quote or tell us what the application asks for and you will get a straight answer first.

Related case studies