If you have been asked for a “notarised translation” in Estonia, that document no longer exists. Since 1 January 2020, Estonian notaries cannot certify a translation or a translator’s signature. The only person who can give a translation official force here is a sworn translator — vandetõlk — appointed by the state after an examination and listed in a public register.
This catches out almost everyone arriving from a country where a notary public, a solicitor or the translation agency itself signs off on translations. The system is different, it is stricter in one respect and simpler in another, and the practical consequences are worth understanding before you order anything.
A sworn translator is a member of a liberal profession who has passed a state examination and holds a professional certificate. They translate the document and certify its accuracy themselves, with their own signature and seal, and they are personally liable for the translation corresponding to the original.
That liability is the product. You are not buying better language — a good non-sworn translator may write just as well. You are buying a document that a court, a registry or a ministry will accept without further questions.
One structural point matters more than any other: a sworn translator is appointed for specific language directions, not for a language in general. The register shows this in brackets after each name. “Eesti-inglise” means Estonian into English only. “Inglise-eesti” means English into Estonian only. Only “eesti-inglise-eesti” covers both. A translator appointed in one direction cannot certify the other, however fluent they are.
Before 2020 an Estonian notary could do two things with a translation: certify the translator’s signature, or — far more rarely — certify the accuracy of the translation itself as a separate official service. The first was the common route, and it carried an obvious weakness: the notary vouched for the signature, not for whether the text matched the original.
The reform moved that authority to the profession that can actually assess a text. The transition ran in stages: sworn translators gained exclusive competence for Estonian-into-foreign-language documents from 2015, and the remaining direction followed on 1 January 2020. The Estonian Chamber of Notaries states it plainly — all officially certified translations are now made by sworn translators.
So when an Estonian institution writes “notarially certified translation” on a form, it is using outdated wording. The document they want is a sworn translation.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia there is no sworn translator profession at all. A “certified translation” there usually means a translation accompanied by a statement of accuracy signed by the translator or the agency, sometimes witnessed by a notary public. The certification comes from the provider, not from the state.
Estonia works the other way round. The authority comes from a state appointment, the individual is named in a public register, and an agency stamp on its own carries no official weight. If a translation agency in Estonia offers to certify your document with its own seal, that is not a sworn translation and it will not be accepted by a court, the Business Register or the Police and Border Guard Board. It is acceptable only where the recipient has explicitly said an agency confirmation is enough.
If you come from a country that does have sworn or court-appointed translators — Germany, France, Spain, Poland, most of continental Europe — the Estonian system will feel familiar. The main difference is scale: the register is small.
There is no single statutory list, because the requirement comes from whoever receives the document. In practice, sworn translation is expected when a foreign-language document is submitted to a court or a bailiff, to a notary for a transaction, to the population register or a vital statistics office, to the Police and Border Guard Board for a residence permit or citizenship application, to the Business Register, or to a university or the Estonian ENIC/NARIC centre for recognition of a foreign qualification.
Banks and insurers vary — some accept an ordinary translation, some do not. Employers, business partners and anything for internal use need no certification at all.
The cheapest thing you can do before ordering is to send the recipient one sentence asking whether they require a sworn translation. Institutions differ, and even departments within one institution differ.
If the document is being read rather than submitted, an ordinary translation is enough and a sworn one is money spent for nothing. Draft contracts your counterpart needs to understand, internal company documents, correspondence, websites, technical manuals, marketing material — none of these require certification.
The same applies at the exploratory stage. If you are still working out what a document says, order a plain document translation first and certify only once it is clear the document is going somewhere official.
Estonian sworn translators work with sixteen languages: English, Russian, Finnish, German, Swedish, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Polish. Everything else — which is most of the world’s languages — has no sworn translator in Estonia.
This is not a dead end. Estonian authorities are obliged to accept certification made by a sworn translator, notary or other competent official of another country. Where that is not possible either, the document is translated abroad into one of the common languages and an Estonian sworn translator then takes it into Estonian. Two steps, two fees, but it works.
The register is published by the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs and is worth opening before you commit to anything: it gives each translator’s contacts, language directions and professional certificate as a PDF. Watch for entries marked kutsetegevus peatatud — practice suspended until a given date. Those names stay in the list and are easy to miss.
An apostille certifies the signature and authority behind a document, and it is issued in the country where the document was made. In Estonia this is done by notaries — any notary, no territorial restriction — for a fixed fee of €27.71 including VAT, within five working days of the application being taken into proceedings.
Two things trip people up. First, order of operations: apostille the original first, then translate. The apostille text has to be translated too, so a translation made before the stamp has to be redone. Second, an apostille may also be required on the translation itself, since a sworn translator’s document counts as a public document; that is a separate application and a separate fee.
There are also cases where no apostille is needed at all. Documents moving between EU member states under Regulation 2016/1191 — birth, death, name, marriage, divorce, parenthood, residence, citizenship, absence of a criminal record — are exempt, and multilingual standard forms can be issued alongside them, which removes the need for translation as well. Estonia’s agreements with Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland exempt documents entirely.
We handle sworn translations and arrange apostille and legalisation, including submission to the notary. Send us the wording of the requirement you received and we will tell you what it actually means in Estonian terms — including when the answer is that you need less than you were told.
What language direction do you need, and is there a sworn translator appointed for it? Is the translation to be made from the original or from a certified copy — that determines whether you have to part with the original? Does the document need an apostille, and if so, has it been done before the translation? And does the recipient want paper or a digitally signed file?
Answering these four in advance is the difference between one order and two.
Is there such a thing as a notarised translation in Estonia? No. Since 1 January 2020 notaries cannot certify a translation or a translator’s signature. Official translations are made and certified by sworn translators.
What is a sworn translator? A state-appointed professional who has passed an examination, holds a professional certificate, and certifies the accuracy of translations with their own signature and seal, bearing personal liability for that accuracy.
Is a certified translation from another country valid in Estonia? Estonian authorities are obliged to accept certification made by a sworn translator, notary or other competent official of another country. Whether a specific institution accepts a specific document is still worth confirming with them directly.
How do I check that a translator is really sworn? Look them up in the register kept by the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs. Check the language directions in brackets after the name, and check that the entry is not marked as suspended.
Does a sworn translation need an apostille? Not for use inside Estonia. If the document is going abroad, the receiving authority may require one; a sworn translator’s document is a public document, so a notary can issue an apostille for it.
How much does an apostille cost in Estonia? €27.71 including VAT, a fee fixed by law and identical at every notary. The document is issued within five working days of the application being taken into proceedings.
