FAQ And Cooperation Conditions

In this section you will find answers to certain questions regarding types of translations and the most common questions regarding what steps are required if any institution asks you for an official translation. This section will also familiarise you with the main conditions for cooperation, our complaint handling procedures and our guarantees.

Definition of certain general terms

Questions regarding cooperation with us

Notarisation
A notary produces a photocopy of your original document that you want to keep and places a notary stamp on the copy to certify that it is genuine. We then work with that notarised copy, which has the same validity as an original, and a court interpreter binds the finished translation with that copy. The notary's stamp that certifies the authenticity of the copy is also translated into the foreign language, and if the document will be used abroad then that stamp must be signed by the notary himself/herself and not by the notary's assistant, representative or clerk (see other services).
Notarisation is not done either for documents that contain photographs or are laminated (such as national identification documents and driving licences) or for certain banking documents (such as bills of exchange).
Notarised copies can be produced only for documents that are clearly originals (such as documents signed in blue ink).

Court certification
A translation with court certification is a translation of a document carried out by a court appointed interpreter who certifies that it agrees with the original or with a notarised copy of your document (if one exists) and places the court interpreter's round stamp on it certifying that the attached translation agrees word per word with the original. This type of translation can then be used for any official purposes.

Super legalisation
Super legalisation of a foreign public document involves the process of verifying the accuracy of signatures and official stamps on the document and is done by a representative office of that foreign country. Afterwards the document is certified by a representative office of the country in which the document will be used. Super legalisation is not required if the respective country has signed the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, which allows super legalisation to be replaced by a special clause known as an Apostille.

Apostilles
Final verification of a document with an Apostille is carried out by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs if the document is issued by a state administration body or other bodies and is carried out by the Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic for documents issued by judicial authorities and documents issued or verified by notaries.

Validity of a translation abroad
If you have a document in a foreign language and you need it for any institution in our country or you have a Czech document translated for official purposes in a foreign country, you should first determine exactly what the particular institution requires and then can contact us. We can then arrange everything that you need (see other services).

Official translation
An official translation is the same as a translation with court certification, because authorities usually do not accept a document in a foreign language or ordinary translations without a round stamp from a court interpreter.

Court translator
A court translator or court interpreter is a person (usually with university education) who is appointed by a court for a particular language and has the right to certify translations with a round stamp with the state emblem of the Czech Republic. A court interpreter can only certify a translation for a language for which he/she was appointed and which is specified on the interpreter's stamp. This means for example that a court interpreter for the Czech and German languages does not have the right to certify a translation from Slovak to German.

Standard pages and price calculation
The price for a translation is per single standard page of text. A standard page contains 30 lines of text with 60 strokes/characters (including spaces) per single line. Therefore a standard page is 1,800 characters including spaces.

Computer technology makes it easy to count the total number of characters in an MS Word document and to divide that number by 1,800 to determine the number of standard pages in the document. We set the price for a translation based on the number of characters of translated text rounded up to the nearest whole number of pages.
We use special programs for counting characters for documents in other formats.

Questions regarding cooperation with us

Ordering translations
If a court translation is required, it is necessary to bring the document to our office. We will then complete a short printed order form with you. The document can also be sent by courier or regular mail with your enclosed order specifying the language for the translation and the delivery deadline along with your contact information and billing address (only for companies with a valid registration number).
In other situations you can send the text to us via e-mail (aprospect@aprospect.cz) and write your language requirement and delivery deadline in the e-mail message along with your contact phone number and billing address. The maximum allowed size for e-mail attachments is 6 MB. Please send files larger than 6 MB via www.uschovna.cz.

Delivery time frames and deadlines
We adapt our delivery time frames and deadlines to our clients' needs. Translations are usually completed within 24 hours after the order is confirmed for translations of up to 10 standard pages into the most common languages.
We can carry out English translations of up to 5 standard pages during the day directly in our office and German, Russian and French translations of the same size by the next day. If you have a special requirement, please call us at 603 528 928.

Confidentiality
Our translators and all employees who come in contact with your information, data and documents are required to protect confidentiality and secrecy of all such information. If you do not wish to entrust your document either with a courier or with the post office or even transfer it electronically, we can deliver it to you in Prague personally in the required format or on the required media (print, CD, DVD, USB disk).

Our guarantee
A. PROSPECT s.r.o. guarantees the accuracy of translations and interpreting up to the billed amount. For court translations our interpreters are insured up to CZK 1 million.

Complaints
A client who is dissatisfied with a received translation for any reason may return it within 2 weeks after receiving it. Afterwards it will be assumed that the translation is fine. We require that clients returning translations highlight the parts of the translation that they disagree with and that they submit the original version of the document that was translated. An independent expert will decide about the legitimacy of the complaint in any disputed case.

Payment conditions
A customer by signing an order pledges to pay the price for the translation by its due date. An estimated price will be quoted when the order is placed.
We require that new clients pay for the first two orders in cash. Payments based on invoices can be agreed upon afterwards.
We always require payment in cash from private individuals and may also require payment of an advance deposit when a translation order is placed.

CAT
The abbreviation CAT stands for and means Computer Aided Translation. These are translations carried out with the aid of special programs that with varying levels of perfection create and then make use of a database of already translated terms. An advantage of their use is that they save time when translating extensive texts or texts with a large number of repeating terminology and assist in creating a uniform database of terminology and ensure better accuracy. We use the software SDL TRADOS 2007 for our work.

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