Yes. GOV.UK is explicit that to bring a body to England or Wales you need a certified English translation of the death certificate, along with permission to remove the body from the coroner or equivalent authority in that country.

In our experience, yes - provided the translation is complete and properly certified. The queries we see raised are rarely about the translation itself. They're about mismatches: the deceased's name spelled one way on the death certificate and another on the will or the title deeds, or a date written in a format that's been read the wrong way round.

We translate the certificate in full, including stamps, seals, marginal notes and registrar's annotations, and we keep the name exactly as it appears on the original. Where the spelling differs from other documents in the estate, we can add a translator's note recording both forms, which usually heads the query off before it's raised.

If the estate has assets in more than one country, mention it. A foreign notary or land registry often asks for more than the Probate Registry does.

Carefully, and without interpreting it.

This is the part of a death certificate that goes wrong most often. Causes of death are recorded in clinical language — sometimes abbreviated, sometimes as an ICD code, sometimes handwritten by the certifying doctor. A translator who paraphrases that into plain English is making a medical judgement they aren't qualified to make, and if the certificate is later used in an insurance claim or an inquest, that paraphrase becomes the problem.

We translate the term precisely, retain the original alongside it where there's no exact English equivalent, and mark anything genuinely illegible as illegible rather than guessing at it. Death certificates go to translators who work on medical and legal documents, not to general translators.

It can be, and based on our experience - it's common. Certificates issued in Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Thai or Chinese script often have more than one accepted way of being rendered in the Latin alphabet, so the spelling on a death certificate and the spelling in a passport can differ without either being wrong. Patronymics cause the same problem - a name recorded in full on a Russian or Ukrainian certificate may appear in a shortened form on a UK document.

We don't quietly "correct" it. We transliterate consistently with the other documents you're submitting, and where the forms genuinely differ we add a translator's note recording the variant. Send us the passport or supporting documents at the same time and we'll make sure the set matches.

Usually, yes. A certified translation establishes what the document says; an apostille authenticates the signature and seal of the official who issued or certified it. Most countries that have signed the Hague Convention will want one before they'll act on a foreign death certificate.

The order catches people out. The document normally has to be notarised before the FCDO Legalisation Office can apostille it, so doing the translation last means starting again. We can arrange the whole chain — translation, notarisation and apostille — so you're not coordinating three providers while dealing with everything else.

You don't have to. GOV.UK confirms that registering an overseas death with the UK authorities is optional — the registration in the country where the person died is the one that legally counts.

Plenty of families do it anyway. A consular death registration creates a UK record, which means you can order certified copies from the General Register Office years later instead of going back to a foreign authority. If you're planning to, keep the original certificate and the translation together.

One thing worth knowing: the register office may ask for the foreign death certificate to be verified before you can use Tell Us Once. Verification and translation are separate things — we handle the translation; the relevant embassy or high commission handles verification.

£30 + VAT for a standard death certificate, with the signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy included. There's no separate certification fee. Most death certificates run to a single page and fall inside that price.

Standard turnaround is 24–48 hours, and same-day option is also available.