Your Constitution
Articles, statutes, memorandum. Whatever your country calls it. This is the long one, and the one that decides how much the job costs.
Travels with: the form that registers a UK establishment.
Constitutions · Accounts · Officer Changes · OS Forms
Companies House Certified Translation For Overseas Company Filings
★★★★★ [score] / 5 · [count] reviews — read themYour pack came back. The letter says the translation was not certified properly. Nothing is wrong with the English. The problem is who signed it. A translation company signed, and the registrar wanted one of your own officers.
That is the rule almost nobody explains. Companies House certified translation needs one of your own officers to sign. A director, a secretary, or another officer the Act names. Signed at the end of the document, not on a cover sheet clipped to the front. We cannot sign it for you.
So here is what we do. Certified translation for company filings starts from £42 a document, back inside 2 to 3 working days. We build the pack, mark where your officer signs, and tell you plainly which papers need nothing at all. No invoice until you have read it.
Every pack includes
- A signature block at the end, ready for your officer
- Officer names spelled as your home register spells them
- Every seal and stamp described where it sits
- A note listing what you do not need to translate
- The same wording kept for your next filing
Registrar Filings
Get A Free Quote
£42
From, per document
2–3
Working days
120+
Languages
0
Invoiced before approval
Already been rejected once? Send the letter with the pack. We will tell you which of the six usual reasons it was, usually the same day.
Ordered by
Corporate services firms
Formation agents
UK subsidiary teams
Accountancy practices
Company secretaries
What the registrar reads
Which Documents Companies House Asks To See Translated
Six, not sixty. Most overseas packs carry far more paper than the registrar asked to see. Each item below says what it proves and which form it travels with. Anything not on this list, ask us first. Before you pay to have a single page of it rendered.
Certificate Of Incorporation
One page, usually. It proves the company exists and gives the number your home register holds. Short, and almost never the reason a pack bounces.
Travels with: first registration.
Your Latest Accounts
The set you already filed at home. Each number is checked back to the original, digit by digit. Nothing is converted into pounds unless you ask.
Travels with: the annual accounts filing.
Officer Changes
A director joins or leaves. Short papers on a short clock. A name spelled two ways matters more here than anywhere else on this page.
Travels with: the change forms, due in 21 days.
Charges Over Assets
Security a lender has taken. The deadline here is tight and it does not move. Late is worse than imperfect, so we build these first.
Travels with: the charge registration form.
A Name Change At Home
Your parent renamed itself. The UK entry has to follow. Usually one short certificate, and people often send the whole constitution again by mistake.
Travels with: the name change form.
Papers heading somewhere other than the registrar follow different rules again, and a bank or a foreign registry will often want a stamp the registrar never asks for. Those are covered under corporate company document translation.
What set the deadline running
Why Overseas Companies End Up Filing At Companies House
Nobody plans this. Something else happened first, and the filing is simply what followed on behind it. Each card below names the event, plus whoever inside the business usually ends up holding it. Find yours and you know which papers we mean, and roughly what they cost.
You opened a British office
A UK establishment has to be registered inside a month. Usually the group company secretary, working from a list somebody else wrote.
Your accounts are due here too
Filing at home does not clear the UK obligation. This one lands on an accountancy practice more often than on the company.
A director changed
Short clock, short papers. Whoever handles board minutes gets it, and they rarely have 21 days to spare.
A lender took security
The charge has to be registered fast. Deal lawyers push this across, and they push it across late in the day.
The parent renamed itself
A change abroad flows through to the UK entry. Corporate services firms handle most of these on behalf of a client.
A second site opened
Each British location registers separately. Operations leads ask this one, and they usually expect the whole pack again.
The registrar publishes what an overseas company has to deliver, and it repays a read before anybody starts rendering anything. The requirements for a UK establishment sit on the gov.uk guidance for overseas companies.
The part that gets packs rejected
Your Director Signs It, Not Your Translation Company
This is the whole page. Most suppliers sell you a stamp and let you assume it counts. It does not. The Companies Act names who may certify a translation for the registrar. A translation company is not on that list. Here is the list, and what it means for your pack.
| The Question | What Most Packs Do | What The Act Asks For |
|---|---|---|
| Who signs | The translation agency signs | A director, secretary or other named officer |
| Where it goes | A cover sheet on the front | At the end of the translated document |
| Notary needed | Often sold as an extra | No. Not for a registrar filing |
| Apostille needed | Often sold as an extra | No. Not for a registrar filing |
The officers who may sign
A director or secretary. A permanent representative. An administrator, receiver, receiver manager or administrative receiver. A liquidator. A judicial factor. That is the whole list.
Why the end, not the front
A signature at the end covers everything above it. Clipped to the front, it covers nothing. Small placement rule, and it is the one people lose a week to.
The bit with real teeth
Your company cannot rely on its own translation against someone who read it and acted. So a loose word is not just a filing problem. It is a commercial one.
One more thing worth knowing. What you file becomes a public record. It stays on the register, and anyone can pull it years later. Your own lawyers will read it during the next deal. So will the other side.
Where the same papers are also going to a bank or a registry abroad, that reader often does want a notary or a government stamp on top. Which act applies, and what it actually confirms, is set out under notarised business translation.
From file to filing
How A Registrar Filing Pack Is Built And Checked
Five steps, and the first one is free. Send the form number, plus a list of the papers on your desk. You get back the items that genuinely need rendering, the ones to leave alone, and a date. That reply lands the same day, and it costs nothing.
The form number first
Tell us which form you are filing. That alone rules half the pile in or out before anybody quotes you a figure.
Names pulled from your register
Officer names, the company name, the registered number. All copied from your home register, letter for letter. Never retyped from memory.
Built, then read against the source
One named linguist builds it. A second reads every line beside your original. Figures and dates get a separate pass of their own.
Signature block set at the end
We lay out the block, name the officer role, and leave the pen work to you. You sign. We never sign on your behalf.
Wording kept for next time
Your terms stay on file. Next year's accounts, or the next officer change, reads like the one you already filed.
A company that registers here usually has other paperwork crossing a border in the same quarter. Contracts, tax records, staff files. Each answers to a different office on a different clock, and one co-ordinator keeps the wording steady across all of it. Everything else we handle is listed on the business translation services hub.
What it costs
How Much Does Companies House Certified Translation Cost?
We cannot price a pack we have not seen. That is the honest answer. But you need a rough idea before you pick up the phone, so here it is. Every figure below is a guide, not your price. Send the papers and we will work out the real one.
| What You Are Filing | What That Usually Means | Usual Delivery | Rough Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certificate of incorporation | One short page, signature block added | 1–2 working days | From about £42 a document |
| Officer change or name change | Short papers, names pulled from your register | 1–2 working days | From about £42 a document |
| Constitution or articles | The long one, priced on the original | 3–5 working days | From about £0.10 a word |
| A set of accounts | Figures checked digit by digit, nothing converted | 3–5 working days | From about £0.11 a word |
| A charge document | Built first, because the clock is tightest | 2–3 working days | From about £0.11 a word |
| A full first-registration pack | Every item above, quoted as one job | 4–6 working days | Priced as a pack, not per item |
| Anything due inside 48 hours | A specialist blocked out, other work pushed back | Same or next day | From about £0.16 a word |
Six Factors Behind The Number You Are Quoted
Two packs with the same page count can cost very different amounts. These six explain most of the gap. The first matters more than the other five together. It usually pushes the number down, not up.
1. How much you actually need
The biggest factor by a distance. Most packs carry paper the registrar never asked for. We mark what can stay in its own language, and that line disappears from the quote.
2. Whether the constitution is in it
Short papers are priced per document. A constitution runs long, so it is priced on the word count of your original. One document can be most of the bill.
3. How thin that language pairing is
Pairs arriving weekly are cheapest. Thin ones cost more, because almost nobody handles registry paperwork in them.
4. Whether we have filed for you before
Your wording stays on file after the first job. A second filing is priced on what changed, not from a blank page. Repeat filers pay the least here.
5. How close the deadline is
Normal dates cost the base figure. Inside 48 hours we block a specialist out and push other work back, so that carries a premium.
6. What state the papers arrive in
A clean file moves straight through. Photographed pages, handwriting in the margin or stamps sitting over text all have to be rebuilt first.
The honest version. Nothing on this page is your price. It is a guide so you can budget before you get in touch. It is not a fixed fee and not an offer. Send the papers and name the form. One price reaches you in writing, a completion date beside it. Neither shifts later. Registrar fees are separate and they are not ours.
Where the parent sits
Certified Company Document Translation Into 120 Plus Languages
Any pair, either way. The countries below send us more registrar work than anywhere else. Against every one of them sits the thing that trips filers up, and it is almost never a plain vocabulary problem. Usually it is a paper with no clean British equivalent anywhere.
| Home Country | What Trips Filers Up |
|---|---|
| Germany | The register extract runs long, and cutting the preamble is what gets it queried |
| France | Officer roles do not map onto British titles, so the wrong word implies the wrong power |
| Spain | Constitutions arrive as notarial deeds, and the deed wrapper is not the constitution |
| Italy | Chamber of commerce extracts carry more legal weight than their length suggests |
| Netherlands | Authority to bind is set out in detail, and flattening it changes who may sign |
| Poland | Names carry characters British forms drop, and the spelling has to survive anyway |
| Gulf states | Company structures are defined by local statute, and that reference has to be carried across |
| China | The company chop carries authority a British reader will underestimate |
| India | Provisions of local statute are cited throughout, and every citation has to survive the crossing |
| Turkey | Trade registry gazette entries are terse, and each line does real work |
Filings also reach us from: Portugal, the Netherlands, Japan, Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Czechia, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Thailand, Vietnam and Bulgaria.
Where packs bounce
Six Reasons Companies House Rejects A Filing Pack
None of these looks wrong at a glance. That is why they get through your own review and stop at the registrar. Five of the six have nothing to do with the quality of the English. They are about who signed, where, and whether a name matches.
The wrong person signed
A translation company signed instead of one of your officers. The commonest reason of all, and the one a supplier will rarely warn you about.
The signature sat on the front
A cover sheet looks tidy and covers nothing. The certificate belongs at the end, after the last line of the translated text.
A name stopped matching
One officer spelled two ways across two papers. Or an accent dropped to fit a British form. The registrar reads both and sees two people.
Half the document travelled
Schedules, annexes and the back page of a deed get left behind. If it is part of the original, it is part of the filing.
Seals were left undescribed
A stamp, an embossed seal or a handwritten note in the margin. Each has to be described and placed, not quietly ignored.
Money was converted uninvited
Accounts arrive in your own currency and they stay that way. Turning it into pounds is a finance decision, and it is not ours to make.
The tax office reads a company's papers on its own timetable and applies no published certification standard at all, which surprises most people who have just cleared a registrar filing. What does apply instead is unpacked under HMRC document translation.
Why the second filing comes back here
Why Corporate Services Teams Reuse The Same Pack
A corporate services firm files for many clients, not for one. So the thing they want is never the cheapest quote on the table. It is a pack that clears first time, every time. No awkward explaining to a client afterwards. Below is what that looks like in practice.
We say what you can skip
Naming the papers that need nothing takes the biggest line off our own quote. It is also why the next client's pack arrives here.
The signature block is already set
Laid out at the end, officer role named, ready for a pen. You are never left guessing where it goes or who may sign.
Names come from the register
Copied from your home extract, letter for letter. Never retyped, never tidied, never anglicised to fit a British form.
Your wording is kept on file
Next year's accounts read like this year's. The same is true of a second site, or an officer change six months out.
One named linguist per client
Not a pool. The same person knows your group structure, so you stop re-explaining it with every new instruction.
Deadlines are not ours to call
Whether you have to file at all, and by when, belongs to your own advisers. Where we are not qualified you hear that plainly, not a guess at a deadline.
Who Builds Your Filing Pack
What you file goes on the public register and stays there. So you should know who produced the wording before it carries your officer's signature. These three handle most registrar work on this desk.
[Full name]
[What they hold — a legal or corporate translation qualification]
Works [languages]. Company filings, [number] years. Based [location]. Came from [role].
Usual work: [document types]
[Full name]
[What they hold]
Works [languages]. [specialism], [number] years. Based [location]. Came from [role].
Usual work: [document types]
[Full name]
[What they hold]
Works [languages]. [specialism], [number] years. Based [location]. Came from [role].
Usual work: [document types]
All three build into a mother tongue, never out of one. Registry and company paperwork is the background they came from, not general text. Confidentiality binds all three. Want to see their work? Samples go out before you commit to anything.
Our credentials
- Registered in England and Wales, company number [insert]
- VAT registration number [insert]
- Registered office: 33 Willmore Road, Birmingham B20 3JH
- Professional indemnity cover: £[insert] through [insurer]
- Working to the ISO 17100 two-linguist framework, meaning one person builds it and a second checks it
- [ATC / ITI membership — list only if genuinely held]
Written and checked by [Name], [MITI, Dip Trans], Head of Corporate Filings at Business Translations UK.
Last reviewed: · Next review: [Month Year]
What clients say
What Filers Said After The Pack Cleared
Real filings we built, each naming the home country, the form it travelled with, and the working days from first reply to a pack ready for signature. Find the one closest to your own.
What people ask first
Questions Filers Ask Before Sending A Registration Pack
Ten questions, every one taken off a real call. Usually from somebody holding a deadline they never set, working off a list someone else wrote. None reads like a textbook definition. Got a question that is not here? WhatsApp it across and you will hear back within minutes.
Can you certify it so our director does not have to sign?
No, and anyone who says yes is guessing. The Act names who may certify, and a translation company is not on that list. It has to be one of your own officers. We build the pack and set the block at the end. You sign it.
Our pack came back. How do we find out why?
Send the letter with whatever you filed. It is almost always one of six things, and five of them have nothing to do with the English. Usually only one element needs rebuilding, not the whole document. That first look costs nothing.
Do we need a notary or an apostille on top?
Not for the registrar. Nothing filed there needs either one. If a supplier is selling you both, ask them which rule requires it. Where the same papers also go to a bank or a registry abroad, that reader may well want one.
Does every paper in the pack need translating?
Rarely. Most packs carry more than the registrar asked for. Send the form number with a list of the papers you are holding. We mark what has to move, and what can stay in its own language. That is where the real saving is.
The constitution is 80 pages. Is all of it needed?
Usually yes, because the registrar wants the constitution as it stands, not a summary. We price it on the original word count, not the page count. And we tell you before you commit whether any annex sits outside it.
Will you convert our accounts into pounds?
No. Numbers remain in whichever currency they were filed in at home. Converting means choosing a rate, and choosing a day. Your accountant's call, not a language one. We flag it, we do not do it.
We are opening a second British site. File it all again?
Often not. If the first registration is already on the register, the second can simply refer back. Repeating the whole pack is usually unnecessary. Ask your own adviser to confirm before you pay to have anything rendered twice.
Our deadline is inside a week. Realistic?
Usually yes. This is one of the few jobs in our trade with nobody else in the chain. No notary. No consulate. Nothing waiting on a government office. Send the form number today and you will know what genuinely fits before committing to a date.
Who sees our documents while you work on them?
Three people, maximum. Whoever builds it, whoever checks it, and your account contact. Confidentiality is signed before anything is opened. No public engine, ever. Say the matter has closed and you get deletion confirmed in writing.
We file for dozens of clients a year. Can we run this on account?
Yes, and volume is exactly where the rate drops. An annual rate can be set. Your own client reference travels on each job. Billing arrives once a month. Wording is held per client, which means a repeat filing is charged only on what moved.
Translation is what we supply and where we stop. No solicitor, accountant or company secretary works on this side. With the registrar we stand exactly where any other filer stands. We do not certify these documents. We do not file them for you. And we give no advice on what your obligations are.
The month is already running
Send Your Constitution Before The Month Runs out.
Name the form, give the opening date, and say what sits on your desk. Back come the papers travelling with it. Items no one asked for are struck off, with a rate and a date. Nothing is billed until your officer has the finished pack and signs it.
1 pack, reused after
0 billed before signature
120+ languages