Five years in, and suddenly the naturalisation file is real. The Department of Justice wants a certidão de nascimento and an antecedentes criminais, in English, signed by someone whose name they can check. Or your Critical Skills permit came through and now your family in Brazil needs their certificates done before they can join you. Either way, paperwork that sat in a drawer for a decade matters again.
We handle Portuguese to English translation for Brazilian and European documents separately, because a cartório certificate and a conservatória one aren't the same thing at all. Before we quote, we check two things: that the version in your hand is the one your reader needs, and that your name reads the same way across every page. Send a photo from your phone, tell us which office it's going to, and you'll have a written price back the same working day.
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The Brazilian community in Ireland grew fastest during the years when people arrived to study English. Many of them moved onto work permits, and those arrivals are now reaching the five-year mark. The residence clock that started with a Stamp 2 has matured into a naturalisation application, and that's a paperwork moment rather than a legal one.
The second wave is different. Critical Skills permit holders can bring their family immediately rather than waiting a year, and the spouse receives a Stamp 1G that allows them to work without a separate permit. That makes Ireland unusually attractive, and it means whole families are gathering Brazilian certificates at the same time rather than one person at a time.
Both groups hit the same wall. A certificate issued in São Paulo in 2009 now has to satisfy someone in Dublin who doesn't read Portuguese and has forty other files open. Almost nothing below is about translation quality. It's about not getting sent back.
Four moments that bring Brazilian paperwork to our desk
Naturalisation, with a birth certificate and a police clearance from Brazil forming the core of the file.
Family reunification, where the spouse and children each need their own certificates translated.
Residence through a spouse, or through an EU citizen partner, which uses a different route again.
A diploma with its histórico escolar, assessed against an Irish qualification.
Named the way your cartório names them, so you can match what's in front of you. Each one has a catch, and the catch is usually what decides whether it's accepted first time.
The backbone of a naturalisation file, and the one where the important part isn't in the middle of the page. Brazil writes later events into the margin: a marriage, a name change, a recognition of paternity. Skip those and a caseworker reads half your history. We translate every one of them.
For the General Register Office and for residence through a spouse. If you're divorced, you need a copy issued after the divorce was registered, because that's the only version carrying the averbação. Brazil doesn't issue a separate divorce certificate at all.
The Polícia Federal clearance. People order this one first and it's the one that should come last, because it ages fast and a certificate sitting around for months gets refused as stale. Gather everything else, then request this. The result line is translated exactly as issued, never softened.
Send both. The diploma alone tells an assessor almost nothing, because what they're comparing is the subject list. Then there's the grading: Brazil marks out of 10, Portugal out of 20, and Ireland out of neither. We set the scale out plainly instead of leaving bare numbers on the page.
The CNH, for the NDLS counter, car hire and insurers. A Brazilian licence can't be swapped the way an EU one can, which puts more weight on the translation than most people expect. Categories and restriction codes get mapped to their Irish equivalents, not copied across and left for someone to interpret.
Notarial deeds, powers of attorney, property records. Usually it's a mortgage application here or a sale back home. A solicitor or a lender reads these line by line, so figures, dates and parcel references come across exactly as written.
A certidão de óbito is handled the same way when an estate or a pension is involved. If you only need one document, our birth certificate translation and police clearance translation pages cover those two on their own.
The language is shared. The paperwork isn't. Treating them as one thing is the quickest way to hand someone a document that reads slightly wrong, and slightly wrong is enough.
A Brazilian certificate comes from a cartório de registro civil. A Portuguese one comes from a conservatória do registo civil. These are not the same institution and they should not be given the same English name, because a caseworker checking against the original will notice.
Brazil issues a certidão de nascimento. Portugal issues an assento de nascimento or a certidão de nascimento with a different layout and different fields. A translator who works mainly with one will mis-title the other, and the field order won't line up against the source.
Brazilian certificates name a municipality and a state, Portuguese ones a freguesia and a concelho. These are administrative levels, not decoration. Flattening them into “city” loses information a registrar may be checking against another document in the same file.
A Brazilian reader expects the shape of a tradução juramentada, which doesn't exist as a legal category in Ireland. We word our certification so it satisfies the Irish reader while still being recognisable to anyone in Brazil who has to look at it later.
We assign the translator by the country that issued the document, not by the language on the page. Plenty of people in Ireland hold a Portuguese passport and Brazilian certificates, and each document goes to the right person. For what certification means in Irish law, see our certified and sworn translation page.
Four names is normal. Often five. A given name or two, then your mother's family name, then your father's, and the certidão lists every one of them. Your passport frequently doesn't. Machine-readable fields have limited room and no accents, so João turns into JOAO and a middle surname quietly vanishes somewhere between the two documents.
An Irish caseworker holding both documents sees two different names. They can't read Portuguese and have no way of knowing that passports truncate. Noticing exactly this kind of mismatch is their job. So they query it, and your file waits while you work out what went wrong.
The fix isn't to change anything. We translate the name exactly as the certificate has it, accents and all, then add a short translator's note recording the passport spelling beside it. Now the caseworker sees both, signed off by a named translator on a certified translation. Nothing for them to guess at, nothing for you to explain later.
Send us both documents and we handle all of them
Conceição on the certificate, CONCEICAO on the passport. Same person, two spellings on one file.
Four names on the certidão, three on the passport. The mother's name is usually the one that goes.
The birth certificate predates the marriage, so the names differ and the link has to be shown.
Irish forms expect one surname in one box. A four-part name has to be placed carefully and consistently.
Brazil issues births and marriages in two forms. Most people find out the second one exists only after their file comes back. Ask your cartório for the right version first time and you save yourself a round trip.
The standard certificate, and what your cartório hands you unless you ask otherwise. It carries the essential facts and it's enough for most Irish applications, including a straightforward naturalisation file. If it shows everything your reader needs, there's no reason to pay for more.
A reproduction of the entire registry entry, including every annotation made since the record was opened. Where a name has changed, a parent has been recognised later, or a marriage and divorce both sit on the record, this is the version that shows the full chain. Some Irish reviewers effectively need it.
The short form is usually a single page in a fixed layout. The inteiro teor reads like a transcript, often running longer, with the annotation history set out in sequence. Send us a photo and we'll tell you which one you have before you order anything from us.
Requesting the wrong version costs a round trip to Brazil, which is weeks rather than days. If your history includes a name change, an adoption, a recognition of paternity or a divorce, ask for the inteiro teor at the outset. It's cheaper than discovering later that the short form left it out.
Brazil has issued apostilles through its cartórios since 2016, so the stamp is straightforward to obtain there. The question is whether you need one at all, and the answer decides what you ask your family in Brazil to do next.
An apostille goes on the original, issued by the country that produced the document. No office in Ireland can add one to a Brazilian certificate, and translating it here doesn't change that. If you need one, it has to be arranged before the document leaves Brazil.
Many Irish applications are satisfied by the original certificate plus a certified English translation. Before you ask a relative in Brazil to visit a cartório again, check with the office that requested the document. We'll tell you honestly if we think you don't need one.
An apostille carries a certificate number, a date, a signatory and an issuing authority. Where your document arrives with one, that page is translated alongside the certificate, because a reviewer who sees an untranslated page will often ask about it.
That's the reverse journey and a different process entirely. Our apostille and DFA legalisation page covers Irish paperwork being sent abroad, including to Brazil.
In practice the order goes: get the right version of the certificate, apostille it in Brazil only if the Irish office actually asked for one, then send it over. We translate the lot, apostille page included.
Different teams, different habits, different things they look for. Knowing which route you're on changes what you gather and the order you gather it in.
The longest file and the one where consistency matters most. Your birth certificate, police clearance and any marriage record all have to agree with each other and with your passport. A caseworker is building a picture of one continuous identity across a decade, so a single mismatched spelling is enough to generate a query.
Residence through an Irish or settled partner rests on the marriage record rather than on your own history. Where a divorce sits behind it, the updated certificate carrying the averbação is the document that matters. De facto partnerships are assessed differently again and lean on evidence rather than a single certificate.
This is the fastest of the four routes, and the paperwork usually arrives in a rush because of it. Several people need certificates at the same moment rather than one at a time, and the names have to line up across all of them. Send the whole family set together and it's priced and delivered as one job.
A large and often overlooked group: Brazilians married to an EU citizen, including Brazilians who themselves hold a Portuguese or Italian passport. The marriage certificate and any children's birth certificates carry the application. Documents usually arrive from two countries at once, which is where the variant question bites.
Not sure which route applies, or on two at once? Tell us what you're applying for rather than which certified translation you think you need, and we'll work back from there.
A single certified translation is usually ready in 24 to 48 hours. A full family set, or a transcript running to several pages, takes two to four working days. If an appointment is already booked, tell us the date when you send the document and we'll say honestly whether it's achievable. Prices start from €25.
Standard Certificate
Per document · nascimento, casamento, óbito, antecedentes
Certified + Affidavit
Per document · sworn before a commissioner for oaths
Same-Day / Urgent
Per document · for a booked appointment or deadline
The figures above are starting prices, not a final quote. Single certificates are priced per document. Longer material such as a histórico escolar, an escritura or a multi-page legal file is priced per page instead, because length is what drives the work. Your final price is confirmed in a written quotation before any work begins, so nothing starts until you have approved the cost.
Naturalisation files, families arriving on a permit, and people who had already been sent back once.
"My passport drops two accents and one surname. They spotted it, added a note explaining it, and the naturalisation file went through without a query."
"My husband is Portuguese and I am Brazilian, so we had documents from both countries. They used a different translator for each and both were accepted."
"My permit came through and the whole family needed certificates at once. Four documents, one quote, all back in three days."
"I sent the short certificate and it was queried. They told me to ask my cartório for the inteiro teor and explained exactly what to say."
"I was about to pay for a sworn translation in Brazil. They explained Ireland doesn't work that way and saved me a few hundred euro."
"My Portuguese assento had to be translated before we could give notice of marriage. Straightforward, and the registrar had no follow-up questions."
"I spent weeks looking for a divorce certificate. They told me Brazil records it on the marriage certificate and exactly what to request instead."
"Our HR team sends Brazilian new-hire documents here regularly. Same quality every time and always back on the day they said."
"Diploma and histórico escolar done together. They laid the grading out clearly and the assessor accepted it straight away."
"An escritura and bank statements for a mortgage. Figures carried across exactly and the broker had nothing to query."
These are the questions people actually ask before sending anything over. If yours isn't here, just ask on WhatsApp.
Tell us which office it's going to, whether that's the Department of Justice, ISD (INIS), the General Register Office or a university. We'll confirm the version you need, flag any name mismatch, and price it in writing before anything begins.
Nothing posted. No anonymous marketplace. A Dublin team with separate Brazilian and European Portuguese translators, a signed statement on every document, and a free reissue if anyone ever queries our work.