You waited weeks for that appointment slot. Maybe two or three months. Then you opened the checklist and found a document sitting there in Polish or Arabic or Portuguese, with no English version anywhere. The translation isn't really the problem. Losing the slot is, because in Ireland right now the next one could be another ten weeks away.
Send us a photo and we'll tell you straight away whether we can have it done before your date. If we can, you get a fixed price in writing and the certified translation lands in your inbox today. If we can't, we say that immediately rather than at five o'clock, so you still have a working day left to try somewhere else. We're open seven days across Ireland, weekends and public holidays included, and urgent work is what the day is built around rather than something squeezed in around it.
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Because appointments in Ireland aren't easy to get any more. Since January 2025, every first-time immigration registration in the whole country happens in one building: Burgh Quay in Dublin 2. There's no local Garda station route left, no walk-ins, and slots are released in batches that disappear within moments.
Waits in Dublin have been running at eight to ten weeks. Some renewal categories have gone past seventeen. So when someone tells us their appointment is on Thursday, we understand what that sentence actually means. It means they've been waiting since the summer.
Courts are the same in a different way. A hearing date doesn't move because a document wasn't ready. Neither does a job start date, a flight, or a wedding with a venue already paid for. That's the real cost of a late translation, and it's never the price of the translation. For a file that isn't urgent, our immigration document translation page is the cheaper route.
Four things that make a late document worse than it looks
Every first-time registration goes through Burgh Quay. Miss it and you rejoin a national queue, not a local one.
Your landing stamp gives you 90 days to register. A rescheduled appointment doesn't extend it.
Everyone over 16 needs their own slot. One person missing a document can unravel the whole set of bookings.
Registration costs €300 per adult. That's a lot of money riding on whether one page is in English.
Often yes. It depends on three things: what time you send it, how long the document is, and which language it's in. Most agencies in Ireland promise urgent certified translation without ever saying when it stops being possible. Here are the actual cut-offs instead.
One or two pages in a common language: Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Arabic, Russian and similar. A birth certificate, a marriage certificate, a licence. Twelve o'clock gives a translator the afternoon, and you have it before the evening.
Multi-page documents, or a whole family set. Transcripts, court papers, several certificates at once. These need a consistency check across every page before they go out, and that check is exactly what stops a counter from querying it later.
We won't promise same-day on a language where only a handful of qualified translators exist in Ireland. Next day is usually achievable. Telling you that upfront is more useful than agreeing and then ringing you at four o'clock.
Past the cut-off and still stuck? Message us anyway. Some days there's capacity and we'll take it. The worst you'll get is a straight no with enough hours left in the day to do something about it.
Anyone can take your money for an urgent certified translation and hope it works out. We'd rather lose the order than lose your appointment, so four things get confirmed in writing before a cent changes hands.
A plain yes or no, not a maybe. We look at the document, the language and the clock, then tell you if it can be done in time. If the answer is no, you hear it in minutes rather than hours, and you still have most of the day to find another option.
You get a figure in writing before we start, including any rush element. Nothing gets added afterwards because the job turned out longer than it looked. If the page count surprises us, that's our problem, not a new invoice.
Sometimes the date on the letter isn't the real deadline, or standard turnaround would land in time anyway. If that's the case we'll say so and charge you the standard rate. Nobody should pay a rush fee they didn't need.
A digital PDF is fine for most counters and portals. Some want a printed copy, and a few want notarisation on top, which changes the timeline completely. Better to establish that at the start than discover it standing at the desk.
That last point matters more than people expect. If a notary has to see the document, same-day is usually off the table, and you need to know that today rather than tomorrow.
Six situations account for nearly every urgent job that reaches us in Ireland. Find yours and you'll know roughly what to expect.
The most common by a wide margin. Usually one or two certificates, and usually discovered two or three days out when someone finally reads the checklist properly. A birth certificate translation is the single most requested item.
Often the solicitor contacting us, not the client. Court papers, affidavits, foreign judgments. These tend to be multi-page, so they need the earlier cut-off, and the formatting has to mirror the original closely enough to be followed in open court.
An employer wants qualifications or a police clearance before day one, and nobody wants to push the start date. Straightforward work, usually one or two documents, and almost always sent on a Friday afternoon.
Ireland needs three months' notice before a civil ceremony, and the appointment is where foreign certificates get checked. The venue is usually booked by then, which is why these calls have a particular tone to them.
A foreign driving licence that needs an English version before the counter will look at it. Short and quick, but the category and restriction codes have to map correctly, and that's where rushed work usually falls down.
Travelling for a funeral, a medical matter or a family emergency, and something needs translating before you go. These are the jobs we'll stretch for, and they're the reason we answer messages on Sundays.
Four steps, and the first two happen inside about fifteen minutes. That speed at the start is the whole point of same-day certified translation, because a fast answer is what gives you options if it turns out to be no.
Don't wait to find a scanner. A phone photo works. Tell us the deadline and which office it's for, and that's enough to start.
Usually within fifteen minutes. If we can make your date you get a fixed price with it. If we can't, you get told now, not later.
A qualified translator takes it, then it's checked against your original before release. Speed doesn't remove that step, because a rejected page costs you far more than an hour.
A certified PDF with a signed statement of accuracy, ready to print or upload. Need a hard copy as well? Say so at the start and we'll sort the post.
One thing worth knowing: the checking step is where rushed translations usually go wrong elsewhere. A page that gets queried at the counter hasn't saved you any time at all, which is why we'd sooner quote you tomorrow than skip it.
Yes to both. Urgent work doesn't keep office hours anywhere in Ireland, and roughly half of it reaches us from professionals rather than from the person whose appointment it is.
Handling an EU Treaty Rights file against a registration date? Our EU Treaty Rights translation page covers which documents in that set need translating at all, which often turns out to be fewer than people assume.
Priced per page and published openly, which is rarer in Ireland than it should be. Nobody working to a deadline wants to fill in a form just to find out whether they can afford it.
24-Hour
Tomorrow is fine · most common choice
Same-Day
Today · order by 12pm for most certificates
Complex Documents
Legal, technical and court material
The figures above are starting prices, not a final quote. What you pay depends on the document, its length and the language pair, and longer jobs earn a lower rate per page. Your final price is confirmed in a written quotation before any work begins, so nothing starts until you have approved the cost and the delivery time.
Most people asking for same-day certified translation don't actually need it. Find your row before you pay a rush rate you could have avoided.
| Your deadline | What to choose | Send it by | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointment today or tomorrow morning | Same-day | 12pm | Message first, don't wait to pay |
| Appointment in two or three days | 24-hour | Any time | Cheaper, and lands with room to spare |
| Whole family set for one date | Same-day | 10am | Send everyone's together, names get matched |
| Court filing or technical report | Complex | 10am | Specialist translator, layout mirrored |
| A week or more away | Standard service | No rush | Don't pay urgent rates. We'll tell you so. |
This page exists for deadlines. If yours is comfortable, the right page is usually a cheaper one. For a document going overseas with a stamp, see apostille and DFA legalisation. If a notary has to sign it, see notarised translation, and note that notarisation almost always rules same-day out. Send us the document either way and we'll point you at the right one.
Our office is at 6 Fern Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18, and on an urgent job the fastest route to a person is +353 87 441 3817.
Appointments saved, a few Sundays worked, and one job we turned down honestly.
"Burgh Quay appointment on Thursday, realised on Tuesday night my birth certificate was in Romanian. Sent a photo, had it Wednesday afternoon. I'd waited nine weeks for that slot."
"They told me they couldn't do my language the same day and said it plainly at half nine in the morning. I found someone else by eleven. That honesty is why I came back later."
"Sunday evening, registry appointment Monday morning. Nobody else was even answering. They replied in about ten minutes and had it done that night."
"I asked for same-day and they told me 24-hour would land in time and cost less. Nobody has ever talked me out of spending money before."
"Court listing moved forward and I needed a foreign judgment translated overnight. Layout matched the original page for page, which is what counsel actually needed."
"Four of us registering on the same morning, four sets of documents. One price, one delivery, and every surname spelled the same way. That last bit mattered."
"Flight to a funeral in two days and a document needed translating first. They dropped everything. I won't forget that."
"We send new-hire documents here and the price is the same every time. No re-explaining the format to anyone, which saves our HR team hours."
"NDLS appointment in the morning and my licence was still in Portuguese. Sent it at eleven, had it by four, walked in the next day and it was accepted."
"Quoted me a price on WhatsApp in twelve minutes on a bank holiday. Same figure on the invoice. No surprise rush fee at the end."
Short answers, because if you're on this page you're probably in a hurry. Anything else, ask on WhatsApp.
Don't fill in a long form. Photograph the document, tell us when you need it and which office it's for, and you'll have a yes or a no with a fixed price attached, usually inside fifteen minutes.
Open seven days, weekends and public holidays included. We'd rather lose the order than lose your appointment, so if we can't make your date you'll hear it straight away while there's still time to act.