Foreign Births Register Translations

A twelve-month queue with no second chances

The Foreign Births Register is one of the quieter routes to Irish citizenship, and one of the slowest. The Department of Foreign Affairs processes applications in strict date order, and its own guidance puts the wait at about a year. That makes the paperwork unusually high-stakes. An application that comes back for a missing detail does not simply get fixed and waved through; it goes back into a queue that is measured in months.

For families whose records were issued in Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy or anywhere else outside the English-speaking world, translations are where small gaps tend to appear. This guide sets out what the DFA actually says about certified translations, which documents are involved, and how to prepare them so that nothing needs to be redone.

Who the register is for

The register exists for people born outside Ireland who have an Irish-born grandparent, or a parent who was already an Irish citizen when they were born but was not born in Ireland themselves. Once your name is entered, you are an Irish citizen and can apply for a passport. If one of your parents was born on the island of Ireland and was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth, you are already Irish and do not need the register at all; you can go straight to a passport application.

The register only works if each generation keeps the chain unbroken. The DFA is blunt about this:

For anyone planning a family, that makes the twelve-month processing time a real deadline, and a returned application can matter far more than the fee.

The DFA definition of a certified translation

The FBR guidance does not set out a separate translation checklist. Instead, it defines a certified document in a way that covers both copies and translations:

It then lists the procedure the certifying person or organisation should follow:

Read that list as a set of boxes an examiner will tick. A translation that is accurate but unsigned, or signed but undated, or dated but with no way of contacting the translator, leaves a box empty.

The five elements, in practice

Which documents are involved

The FBR application is built around original civil records for up to three generations. For an application through a grandparent born in Ireland, the DFA asks for documents relating to you, your Irish citizen parent and the Irish-born grandparent, and it states that originals must be submitted unless it says otherwise. Typically that means:

The grandparent's Irish records will normally be in English. The documents that usually need translating are the ones issued abroad: your own birth and marriage certificates, your parent's, and any name-change or adoption paperwork. If any of those is not in English or Irish, a certified translation is the sensible way to present it, because the DFA's own definition of a certified document covers translations and, as the next section shows, the Passport Service requires one in almost identical circumstances.

The passport step uses the same records

Registration is rarely the end goal. Most people want the passport that follows, and the Passport Service is explicit about foreign-language civil records. On its page for child applications, it asks for the child's full original civil birth certificate and adds:

For adults applying with a Foreign Birth Registration Certificate, the Passport Service asks for the original FBR certificate or a certified colour copy, plus proof of name and proof of address documents that "must be accompanied by a translation into English or Irish". Having a single, consistent set of certified translations from the start saves you commissioning a second set later.

Originals, copies and translations are three different things

Applicants often mix these up, and the DFA treats them differently.

A translation should therefore travel with the original certificate it belongs to. It helps the examiner if each translation clearly identifies the source document, for example by the certificate number and the issuing registry.

Names, dates and the pre-1864 problem

Two details catch people out. First, the DFA says your FBR certificate will feature your name exactly as it appears on your birth certificate, and your Irish citizen parent's name will appear exactly as on their birth certificate. A translator who silently anglicises a name, drops a second surname or "corrects" a diacritic creates a mismatch between the translation and the original. Good practice is to reproduce names exactly as written in the source, including accents, and to add a transliteration only where the source uses another alphabet.

Second, Irish civil birth registration only began in 1864. The DFA notes that where a grandparent was born before then, it can accept the grandparent's baptismal certificate. The rest of the family chain may still need translating.

How we prepare an FBR translation

Every certified translation we produce for Irish use carries a signed Certificate of Accuracy worded to mirror the DFA formula ("Certified to be a true translation of the original"), the translation date, the translator's name and signature, our company address, phone number and email, a company stamp and a reference number. That covers each element of the DFA procedure, using the stamp option.

The price is €29.95 per page, where a page is up to 300 source words, and most orders of one to three pages are delivered within 24 hours. A 12-hour service is available on request. You receive a digital PDF by email as standard; because the FBR is a postal application, you may prefer to add a hard copy sent by tracked post at checkout. If the DFA or the Passport Service rejects a translation, we revise it free of charge or refund you in full.

We translate from more than 100 languages into English, including Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German and Ukrainian. You can start an order by uploading clear scans, or get a quote first if you have a bundle of family records.

Mistakes that send files back

For the wider picture on what a certified translation is in Ireland and who can certify one, see our guide to certified translation in Ireland. If your case runs through naturalisation instead, read the citizenship and naturalisation guide.