The checklists clients bring in lately have started to look alike. Around 6 November, public security exit-entry authorities in several cities reminded exit-entry intermediary agencies to complete their filing: the Measures for the Filing of Agencies and Personnel Engaged in Exit-Entry Intermediary Services, issued jointly by the National Immigration Administration and the State Administration for Market Regulation, took effect on 15 September, and agencies already operating must file within 90 days — operating without filing after that is unlawful. The filing pack includes proof of legal entity status, cooperation agreements signed with overseas service providers, and an account of those relationships. On the other side, several countries introduced electronic pre-checks in 2026 with new verification requirements for proof of household registration, study status and language test results; six months of bank statements, police clearance certificates and notarised transcript translations keep appearing on visa checklists.
So the same question keeps coming: can we simply have these foreign-language documents translated and stamped here, and submit them in one go? Our answer has not changed. Translation and the application of a registered translation seal are ours to provide; notarisation, apostilles and consular legalisation belong to a separate process handled by notaries and the relevant authorities. That boundary has to be made clear when the files arrive, otherwise a client takes our stamped translation straight to a legalisation desk and ends up having it sent back for reformatting.
Bank statements: line by line, with nothing merged or removed
Bank statements cause the most trouble of the three. The reviewer is looking at consecutive months and the movement of funds, and summarising is not allowed. The header, account number, currency, transaction date, description, credits, debits, balance, page numbers and the bank seal or electronic verification marker all have to appear in the translation; where six consecutive months are required, one missing month makes the set incomplete. Electronic statements from foreign banks often carry no physical seal — the translation should record that faithfully as "electronic statement / no seal" rather than inventing an explanation on the client's behalf.
The balance fields go wrong most often. Closing balance and available balance are different things, and writing only balance loses information; cleared funds must not be confused with pending items. Above all, transaction descriptions must never be condensed — merging several payments of different purposes into "miscellaneous" removes the traceability the reviewer needs. We set the translation out line by line against the original, keep pagination continuous, and position the seal and translator's declaration according to the receiving authority's practice. A full checklist and delivery notes sit on our bank statement translation and stamping page, so clients can check their own files before sending them in.
Police clearance certificates: not one word of the conclusion may be rewritten
The difficulty here is restraint, not language. The issuing authority, document number, spelling of the name, former names, passport number, date of birth, search period and the wording of the conclusion are all reproduced as they stand. If the receiving authority specifies an English title, use it: Certificate of No Criminal Record and Police Clearance Certificate are the two common forms, and choosing whichever reads better is not our call. Validity is normally set separately by the issuer or the receiving body; the translation adds no notes, no "verified" glosses, and no broader phrasing than the original search period allows.
One rejection pattern is typical: a client runs the certificate through a tool, a qualifying phrase disappears from the conclusion, the meaning looks much the same, and the reviewer rules that the translation no longer matches the original. For identity documents the pass mark is word-for-word correspondence, not a fluent read. The document checklist is on our police clearance certificate translation page.
Household registers: cell by cell, and "service place" is wrong
A household register looks simple but has the most cells. Household number, household type, name of the head, relationship to the head, place of employment, marital status, education level, place of birth, transfer records, registration date and the police station seal — none may be omitted; collective and individual households use different layouts, and supplementary and amendment pages count too. Several fixed traps: "relationship to the head of household" is Relationship to Head of Household; "place of employment" means the employer, so Employer or Place of Employment, not service place; "education level" is Education Level, not Culture Degree; and unmarried, married, divorced and widowed each have their own term, chosen from the original wording rather than from general knowledge.
On these jobs we rebuild the table to match the original layout, fill each cell with its translation, then have a second person check names, numbers, dates and the position of the seal against the scan. The field-by-field reference is on our household register translation page.
The delivery workflow and four reasons for rejection
The workflow itself is straightforward: check that the scans of the originals are legible, complete and correctly paginated when they arrive; lay out and translate item by item against the original; have a second person verify name spellings, document numbers, dates, amounts and seals; apply the registered translation seal and attach the translator's declaration and a copy of the agency's credentials where the receiving authority asks for them; then deliver PDF and paper copies. It looks fussy, but almost every rejection traces back to the first two steps being rushed.
The reasons cluster around four: self-translation or machine output with no translation agency seal; summarised or deleted descriptions and table cells; missing pages, supplements or amendment records; and name spellings that disagree with the passport, or two spellings within one set. One more is not really a translation problem but wastes the most time — treating notarisation, apostilles and consular legalisation as a kind of "stamping", only to discover at the desk that they must be obtained separately. We provide translation and a registered translation seal, and the boundary is set out on our certified document translation overview.
Prepare early rather than wait for a rejection
A filing deadline and tighter visa checks point to the same thing: the compliance chain for people crossing borders is getting more detailed, and documents have to survive field-by-field scrutiny. Having complete scans ready, unifying name spellings with the passport and printing six full months of statements in one go is far less painful than a rush rework later. Why the trade notices of 6 November connect to these documents is explained in the paperwork behind November trade news; the translator's list of easily confused terms is in Twelve terms that are easy to get wrong. Unsure which documents a checklist actually requires, you can contact us to go through it before starting.