For more than 20 years, LITS has translated and certified documents for UK offices and supplied interpreters to courts and hospitals, in more than 300 languages, and whichever you need, we take care of the details for you.
For a standard document, allow 12 to 48 hours for the translation, the check and the certification; your quote gives the timing for yours. Interpreters attend in person anywhere in Northampton, or join by telephone or video. Send your enquiry any time between 9am and midnight, seven days a week, and you will have a quote back generally within the hour.
We translate for government departments and national employers as much as for a family getting one certificate ready for one appointment. Every certified translation carries our statement that it is accurate and complete, signed by the director of LITS, and each page of the paper copy is stamped by us.
The Royal Courts of Justice in London and the District Registry of the High Court in Manchester are among the courts where our interpreters regularly work, and so is Northampton’s Crown, County and Family Court. We work with NRPSI-registered interpreters, and LITS is an ATC Accredited Member – background checked by the Association of Translation Companies and bound by its Code of Professional Conduct.
"Translation documents were safely received. Thanks for dealing with this so promptly!"
L. S., Senior Advocate · Romanian legal translation
Tell us what you need. A clear photo or scan of every page, and the name of the office it’s for.
You get a price. Quotes generally within the hour, 9am-midnight, 7 days a week.
We see it through. A translation comes back as a checked, certified PDF, with a certified paper copy sent by tracked special delivery if the office wants one.
For an interpreter rather than a translation, use our interpreter booking form.
If the interpreter we’ve booked can’t come, we provide another. And where a client already knows one of our interpreters, ask for them by name: for many of our languages we work with interpreters under standing arrangements.
What will a translation cost? A birth certificate’s price is published on our birth certificate translation page. Anything else is quoted from what you send, in writing and before we start, and a whole set of papers can go into one quote.
Every mark on the page. Stamps and seals on both sides, and any handwritten entry or note added later, come across into the English, because the official reading it sees every mark. Anything too faint or damaged to read is marked as illegible, never guessed at, and if the version you’ve sent looks wrong for its purpose, you’ll hear that from us at the quote.
One name, linked across every document. A Romanian surname with its accents, or a Bengali name written three ways over the years, can make one person look like two. Your passport decides the spelling (or the form the translation supports, where that differs), with the original shown alongside, and if two of your documents disagree, you’ll hear it from us before the work goes ahead.
The Northampton Registration Office in the Central Library on Abington Street needs to see your originals at the notice appointment itself: the decree absolute or final order if a previous marriage ended in divorce, or the death certificate if you were widowed, with divorce papers translated into English where they aren’t already. Where names differ across your papers, the registrar needs “a clear link between all of the names on the documents”, and papers translated at different times often spell the same name differently.
So we translate the set together from clear photos or scans, with one spelling of your name throughout, while the originals stay with you. You arrive with everything the registrar needs to see.
If either of you can’t speak or understand English, the council says you must bring someone to interpret, and you can’t interpret for each other. We can provide the interpreter for that appointment too, through our interpreter booking form.
Worth knowing
Kettering, Corby and Wellingborough are in North Northamptonshire, a different council with its own register service, and notice is given where you live. If your paperwork names a North Northamptonshire office, tell us, and we prepare the translations for that one.
The University of Northampton asks applicants who need a Student visa for “all original qualification documents, or certified translations if the documents are not in English”. Its pages for international applicants also use “certified copy”, and mean something different by it: a photocopy carrying the school’s own original stamp. A stamped copy of a document that isn’t in English is still a copy, with nothing in it the university can read.
What we provide is the translation: the full document in English, done by a qualified translator working into their mother tongue and checked in-house, with a certificate of accuracy that we sign, stamp and date. So alongside any copies, you’re sending the certified translation the university asks for.
Northampton Crown, County and Family Court on Lady’s Lane hears criminal trials, civil claims and family cases in one building, so the interpreter gets the kind of hearing as well as the building. The magistrates’ court is a separate building in Campbell Square, but GOV.UK gives Lady’s Lane as its address to write to, which is how a booking copied from correspondence can end up at the wrong building.
So we book the interpreter from the hearing notice: the venue, the kind of hearing and whether you’ll attend in person or by video. Send us the notice once, and the right building is on the interpreter’s booking.
For hearings where booking the interpreter is down to you, conferences with counsel and the statements taken before them, we supply qualified interpreters, NRPSI-registered or members of ITI. An employment or immigration tribunal provides the hearing interpreter on request, so for those cases, ours is for the conferences and statements before the hearing. Not sure whose job it is to book the interpreter, the court’s or yours? The court-interpreter booking guide sets it out.
"Excellent assistance from the interpreter. Very helpful over a lengthy conference."
Sharon W., Defence Barrister · Albanian interpreting
Northampton General Hospital at Cliftonville is run by its own NHS trust, but not every service on the site is: Northamptonshire Healthcare runs mental health liaison in A&E and on the wards there, as well as Berrywood Hospital, a separate site. St Andrew’s Healthcare, beside the hospital on Billing Road, is a charity with several entrances of its own. A booking that says “mental health, Northampton” could mean any of the three, and an interpreter sent to the wrong one keeps a patient waiting to be understood. So we take the service, the unit and the address from the appointment letter, and the interpreter has them before the day. Nobody needs you to explain the difference.
For a police interview, Campbell Square Police Station has a public enquiry desk, but custody is at the Criminal Justice Centre at Brackmills. Before a PACE interview there, the interpreter already has the custody address and the nature of the interview, so neither needs chasing from the custody desk. Our interpreters hold enhanced DBS certification, and where an assignment requires it, Home Office Counter Terrorist Check or police vetting to NPPV3.
Residents by main language, West Northamptonshire, Census 2021
| Language | West Northamptonshire residents |
|---|---|
| Romanian | 15,250 |
| Polish | 7,828 |
| Russian | 2,019 |
| Lithuanian | 2,007 |
| Bengali | 1,348 |
| Malayalam | 1,117 |
| Language | West Northamptonshire residents |
|---|---|
| Latvian | 1,014 |
| Hungarian | 931 |
| Gujarati | 827 |
| Albanian | 787 |
| Italian | 735 |
| Portuguese | 692 |
ONS Census 2021, TS024, West Northamptonshire local authority (E06000062), usual residents aged three and over; the authority is larger than the town.
Taking a translation to court? A court will usually want other things filed with it, and our guide on filing foreign-language evidence in a UK court covers the rest.
To begin, send us a photo of the document, or the date, language and address of the appointment, and we’ll quote you. Once you go ahead, the details travel with the work to the translator or the interpreter, so all that’s left for you is the appointment or the application itself. Quotes generally within the hour, 9am to midnight, seven days a week. You can also call us on 01254 674514.
What every certified translation includes is set out on our certified translation page, and if your appointment is better by phone or video than in person, our interpreting service explains how each works. For somewhere other than Northampton, see where else we work.