Gathering documents for the visa — the apostille/translation rabbit hole

The bit that tripped me was that not every translator counts — some offices only accept a sworn or officially recognised one, and a regular translation just gets bounced. Wish I'd checked what was actually accepted before I paid for the first one.

Order more certified copies than feels reasonable. Every office keeps one and you don't get it back, so you end up going back for more anyway — might as well do it once.

The apostille step itself took way longer than I expected, so start that first before booking anything downstream. Question for anyone who's done this: did you get the apostille before or after the translation? I can't tell if the order actually matters or if I'm overthinking it.

This is a good one to be careful with: exactly which documents need an apostille vs a sworn translation vs a plain copy is country- and document-specific, and it changes. The Documents and Visa sections of your destination guide list what's actually required — worth confirming there before you pay a translator, because the wrong format means doing it twice.

Anna — in my case it mattered a lot: apostille the original first, then translate the document together with the apostille itself. I did it backwards and had to pay for a second translation. Worth confirming the order for your specific destination rather than assuming, like Jimmy said above.

Doing this right now, this thread is saving me a lot of guessing. Thank you all.

Doing this from India right now. In our case the apostille queue was much longer than the translation itself, so Anna's point about starting the apostille first holds. We've got two birth certificates and a marriage certificate in the queue and the translator is just waiting.