Arabic translator in Tbilisi

"Arabic translation" is not one service: it is the authorities of more than twenty countries, where the same document is accepted under different rules. Saudi Arabia accepts the apostille, the United Arab Emirates require full consular legalisation, Egypt follows its own procedure, while in Morocco and Tunisia the apostille is already in force. We translate personal, academic, commercial and medical documents from Arabic into Georgian and from Georgian into Arabic, certify them notarially and plan the certification route for the specific country. This page describes how the document systems of Arabic-speaking countries are organised, what the difference is between literary Arabic and the dialects, and which details most often cause an authority to refuse.

Apostille or legalisation: a map of the countries

With regard to the Hague Apostille Convention, Arabic-speaking countries fall into two groups, and this is the first question we ask when taking an order.

• Apostille is enough: Saudi Arabia (since December 2022), Oman (since 2012), Bahrain (since 2013), Morocco (since 2016), Tunisia (since 2018). For these countries a Georgian document receives an apostille at the Public Service Hall and needs no further certification
• Full consular legalisation: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and the remaining countries. A Georgian document is first certified at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, then at the embassy of the respective country, and in the destination country one more certification by the local foreign ministry is often added

In the reverse direction the same map applies: a Saudi document arrives with an apostille, while a UAE document arrives with the certification of the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Georgian embassy (or the UAE embassy in Tbilisi and the Georgian foreign ministry). Convention membership changes, the Saudi case is a recent example, so on every order we check the current status rather than a remembered rule.

UAE legalisation step by step

The United Arab Emirates are the most frequent Arabic-speaking destination for Georgians: employment in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, company registration in free zones, real estate, medical licensing. Preparing a Georgian document for the UAE goes like this: a notarised translation or copy, certification by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, certification by the UAE embassy in Tbilisi, and, after arrival in the UAE, certification by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC). After that, if the document is submitted to a UAE court or a state authority, the Arabic translation must be made or confirmed by a legal translator licensed by the UAE Ministry of Justice. Our Arabic translation is the working and often the final version in this chain for most private companies, employers and free zones, while for court documents we cooperate with a licensed partner in the UAE.

Saudi Arabia after the apostille

Saudi Arabia joining the convention was a significant simplification of the procedure for Georgian clients: what previously required three-stage legalisation is today completed with a single apostille from the Public Service Hall. However, Saudi authorities still require an Arabic translation, and for employment (especially in the medical and engineering fields) an additional verification of the diploma through specialised systems, where the university directly confirms the authenticity of the document. We prepare the Arabic translation of the diploma, transcript and experience certificates, attach the apostille to the original and advise the client to start the verification process in parallel with the translation, because it takes months.

Literary Arabic and the dialects

Documents in every Arab country are written in Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha), and written translation is made precisely into it; this is the language that an Iraqi judge and a Moroccan notary read identically. Spoken communication, however, runs in dialects, which often differ from each other to the point of mutual unintelligibility: the Gulf, Egyptian, Levantine and Maghrebi dialects use different vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical habits. For us this means that a translator with a command of Fusha works on written translation, while for interpreting the interpreter is chosen according to the dialect of the specific region. Maghrebi documents (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) have an additional French layer, and many official papers are bilingual, Arabic-French, which is taken into account separately when planning the translation.

Which documents are translated most often

• The employment package for the Gulf countries: diploma, transcript, work experience certificate, criminal record certificate, medical certificate
• Medical staff licensing documents for the health regulators of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia
• Marriage, birth and divorce certificates for family reunification and residence
• Company founding documents for free zone and mainland registration, commercial register extract (sijil tijari)
• Power of attorney (wakala) for property, company or court representation
• Documents of Arabic-speaking students for enrolment in Georgian universities: from Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria
• Documents of Gulf investors for real estate and business registration in Georgia
• Discharge summaries and test results for continuing treatment between Georgia and the Arab countries

Embassies in Tbilisi and Georgian missions in the Arab countries

The embassies of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Iraq operate in Tbilisi, and their consular sections handle legalisation and visa matters; Georgia in turn has embassies in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait, Cairo and other capitals. Each embassy has its own requirements for the form of the document: some require the Arabic translation to be already bound before legalisation, others first certify the original and leave the translation for the destination country. We know these differences and plan the legalisation route according to the practice of the specific embassy, and we advise the client to read the written requirement of the final receiving authority in advance.

Arabic names: four components and transliteration

An Arabic name usually has four components: the given name, the father's name, the grandfather's name and the family or tribal name, often with the elements "bin" or "al-". The Georgian document system knows three fields, name, surname and patronymic, and in the translation the Arabic structure must be distributed across the Georgian fields so that it matches the Latin line of the passport and is identical in every document. Latin transliteration differs between Arab countries (Mohammed, Muhammad, Mohamed are the same name in three countries), so in the translation we use only the passport version; the Georgian transcription is identical in all documents of one client. A Georgian name goes into Arabic the other way round: the Arabic script often does not mark vowels, and the Georgian "Beridze" must be written in Arabic so that an Arab official can link it to the Latin form in the passport.

The Hijri calendar, numerals and script

Official documents of Saudi Arabia use the lunar Hijri calendar (Umm al-Qura), other Arab countries use the Gregorian calendar or both in parallel; in the translation the Hijri date is converted into Gregorian with an exact algorithm, with the original kept in brackets, because the lunar calendar shifts eleven days a year against the Gregorian one, and an approximate conversion makes the date of birth inconsistent with the passport. Numerals in the eastern Arab countries are in the Eastern Arabic form (٠١٢٣), in the Maghreb in the usual form, and both are converted into usual numerals. The right-to-left script also raises the question of binding and page numbering, which we check before notarisation so that the embassy does not return the page order during legalisation.

Arabic-speaking students in Georgian universities

Tbilisi State Medical University and private medical schools admit Iraqi, Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian students to English-language programmes, and in the enrolment package the Arabic-language school certificate, grades and sometimes the transcript of a previous university are translated into Georgian or English. In the case of Iraqi and Syrian documents legalisation is particularly difficult, because the embassy network is limited and the document often comes through a third country; we translate and certify what arrives with legalisation, and we tell the client directly that without legalisation the authority will not accept the document. In the opposite direction the number of Georgian students in Arab countries is small, but Arabic studies students who receive language scholarships at universities in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco prepare their package with us.

Gulf investors and tourists in Georgia

In recent years the tourist flow and investment from the Gulf countries into Georgia have grown sharply: direct flights from Dubai, Doha, Riyadh and Kuwait, the economic partnership agreement with the UAE, Gulf investors' projects in real estate and the hotel business. This creates two types of translation: investor documents (company papers, power of attorney, bank statements) for the Georgian registry and banks, with legalisation and a notarised Georgian translation, and localisation for the Gulf tourist: materials of hotels, restaurants, clinics and tour companies in Arabic, where the expectations of halal food, family space and privacy must match the cultural norms of the Gulf guest.

Business documents: the bilingual contract and the precedence of Arabic

In the UAE and Saudi Arabia a contract in two languages, Arabic and English, is standard practice, and in many jurisdictions the Arabic version prevails by law in a court dispute, regardless of what the contract says. For a Georgian company this means that the quality of the Arabic version is decisive in case of a dispute, and our bilingual contract is checked by two native-speaking editors and a lawyer, with a terminology consistency table. Islamic finance terminology (murabaha, ijara, sukuk) is separate knowledge needed in dealings with banks and investment funds, while free zone registration documents (DMCC, JAFZA, ADGM, Qatar Financial Centre) come with their own templates, which we know.

Who translates: the Arabic studies school and the native-speaking editor

Qualified Arabic translators in Georgia come from the Arabic studies school of Tbilisi State University and the Institute of Oriental Studies, from Georgians who studied or worked in Arab countries, and from Arabic-speaking specialists living in Georgia. Only a translator registered with the notary in the Arabic-Georgian pair works on a translation to be notarised, while a translation from Georgian into Arabic is always checked by a native-speaking editor who knows the administrative terminology of the specific country: the authorities of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco often designate the same concept with different terms.

Egypt, Jordan and the Levant: a different logic, different authorities

Apart from the Gulf countries, an important part of the Arabic direction is Egypt, Jordan and the Levant countries, where the logic of document flow is different. The Egyptian embassy in Tbilisi carries out legalisation under its own rules, and Egyptian authorities often require an additional certification of the document by the consular service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; in the case of Jordan, legalisation may go through an embassy accredited in a third country. From these countries mostly students, medical staff and small businesses come to Georgia, and their documents (an Egyptian school certificate, a Jordanian university transcript, Lebanese bilingual Arabic-French papers) carry terminology different from the Gulf templates. We know these differences and process the translation in the administrative language of the issuing country, and we plan the legalisation route according to the practice of the specific embassy.

Handwritten, old and damaged documents

Part of the Arabic-language documents contain handwritten entries: old civil status booklets, handwritten annexes of notary offices, documents from the war period in Iraq and Syria that are damaged or incomplete, and historical papers that require reading Arabic handwritten scripts (ruq'ah, naskh). We first examine such a document and write down which fragment is read unambiguously and which is not; an illegible place is marked with a note in the translation and is never filled in by guesswork, because a notarised translation must correspond one to one with the original. We often advise requesting a new extract or duplicate from the issuing authority instead of such a document, which simplifies both legalisation and translation, though we know that in the case of Iraq and Syria this is not always possible, and then we process the document in the form in which it exists.

What we cannot do and where we advise another route

We cannot put an apostille on a document going to the UAE, Egypt or Qatar, because these countries do not recognise the apostille; we cannot "issue" a UAE Ministry of Justice legal translation from Georgia, though we cooperate with a licensed partner; we cannot confirm a diploma in an employer's verification system, which is the university's job; and we cannot translate a conversation recorded in a Gulf dialect with a Fusha translator, because that is a different qualification. In every such case we tell you exactly which route works, and where necessary we ourselves coordinate the process with a partner in the Arab country.

Deadlines and organisation

An Arabic translation of a standard personal document with notarisation is ready within one working day, in express mode within 1-2 hours. The apostille is added within the Public Service Hall deadlines, while legalisation depends on the schedule of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the respective embassy and takes several working days. You upload the document on the website, receive the translation electronically or by courier, and for legalisation we need the original physically. All documents are processed under a confidentiality agreement.

Frequently asked questions