Articles of Incorporation Translation Services

The One Document Every Authority Asks For First

No corporate paper travels as often as the charter. A Munich manufacturer qualifying to do business in Pennsylvania, a Shanghai trading house passing due diligence at an American lender, a French startup founder assembling an E-2 petition: each of them opens the same folder and finds the same request at the top of it. Prove the company exists. Show us who formed it, where, with what capital, and who is entitled to sign for it. The answer lives in the articles of incorporation, the certificate of formation or the registry extract, and until that document reads cleanly in English, the qualification stalls, the account stays frozen and the petition sits unfiled.

Jurilingua opened its doors in 1984, and formation documents were on the very first invoices. Four decades on, the desk that handles them is staffed by legal linguists who know what a Secretary of State examiner rejects, what a bank compliance officer flags and what a USCIS adjudicator questions. A second qualified reviewer reads behind the first on every single order, no exceptions for short certificates, and corporate clients keep scoring the result 4.8 out of 5. When a filing window is closing, that record is worth more than any promise.

Handelsregisterauszug, Kbis, Escritura: We Read Them All

Formation paperwork wears a different uniform in every jurisdiction, and recognizing the uniform is half the skill. From Germany and Austria comes the Handelsregisterauszug, a registry extract dense with abbreviations that only make sense to someone who has read hundreds of them. France sends the extrait Kbis, the one-page identity card of a French company, plus statuts running much longer. Spain and most of Latin America produce the escritura constitutiva or acta constitutiva, notarial deeds that fold the charter, the bylaws and the founding shareholders into a single instrument. China issues business licenses whose registered scope of business must be rendered term for term, and Japan supplies certified copies of the commercial register, the tokibo tohon, in a format all its own.

Alongside these sit the certificates of good standing, certificates of incumbency, shareholder registers, amendment filings and name-change certificates that complete a corporate identity file. We translate the full set in either direction: foreign documents into English for American authorities, and American articles, certificates and Delaware good standing letters into the language of whatever registry abroad is asking. The method behind that consistency, one translator, one independent reviewer, one client glossary, is laid out openly on the page describing how we work, and it does not bend for small jobs.

Where These Translations Go to Work

State qualification is the classic destination. A foreign entity registering to transact business in Texas, Illinois or Georgia must file evidence of its existence at home, and most Secretaries of State want that evidence in English, often certified. Banking runs a close second: know-your-customer review has hardened everywhere, and an account for a foreign parent or a new US subsidiary will not open until the compliance team can read the formation chain from original charter to current extract. Courts make the third stop. When a foreign company sues or is sued in an American court, its capacity to appear rests on corporate documents the judge must be able to read, and opposing counsel will happily attack a sloppy translation.

Immigration work has its own rhythm. E-2 treaty investor and L-1 intracompany transfer petitions stand or fall on proof that the foreign enterprise is real, active and properly owned, so immigration attorneys send us charters, registry extracts and shareholder records as a bundle, translated and certified as a bundle. Then come the outbound files: US companies opening branches in Riyadh, subsidiaries in São Paulo or joint ventures in Tokyo, and procurement teams entering government tenders abroad where a bid without translated corporate credentials is a bid disqualified. Registered agents forward work in both directions, because their clients' deadlines become theirs.

Why a GmbH Is Not an LLC, and Why It Matters on Paper

The fastest way to spot an amateur translation of a charter is to look at the entity type. A German GmbH resembles an American LLC, but the resemblance is partial: capital rules, management structure and member liability all diverge, and a translation that simply swaps the labels tells the American reader something the German document never said. A French or Spanish SA is close to a corporation without being one. A Dutch BV, a Brazilian Ltda, a Japanese kabushiki kaisha: each occupies its own spot on the map of company law, and flattening them into US categories can distort exactly the facts a bank or court is trying to verify.

Our practice keeps the original designation visible and explains it. The rendering preserves GmbH as GmbH, glosses it accurately as a German limited liability company, and lets the surrounding text describe its actual features rather than borrowed American ones. Where the receiving authority needs a functional comparison, a translator's note supplies it without pretending the two forms are identical. This is the kind of judgment that separates legal translation from word substitution, and it is one reason corporate counsel who test us once tend to route every formation file through the same desk afterward. The document stays honest, and honesty is what an examiner is checking for.

Names, Numbers and Capital: Nothing Gets to Drift

A charter is mostly data wearing a legal coat. The registered name must match the source character for character, because a bank will compare it against the SWIFT record and a state examiner against the application form, and a single dropped accent or transposed initial triggers a rejection letter. Registration numbers, tax identifiers, SIREN and SIRET codes, Chinese unified social credit codes, Japanese corporate numbers: all of it transfers digit-perfect, verified independently by the second linguist rather than assumed correct. Share capital comes with currency, denomination and share count intact, never converted, never rounded, because the figure is evidence, not information.

Transliteration gets deliberate treatment. A company named in Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic script usually has an official Latin spelling already living in bank records, contracts or prior filings, and we ask for it before choosing one, so your translated charter never contradicts your own paperwork. Every rendering feeds a dedicated glossary held for your account alone, and translation memory applies it to the next document automatically, which is how a client's tenth registry extract arrives faster and cheaper than the first while matching it exactly. Files move through encrypted channels from upload to delivery, with access limited to the two linguists working on them.

Certified, Apostilled and Inside the Filing Window

Most formation documents are translated because an authority demands them, so the translation must arrive dressed for that authority. Certification comes standard whenever it is needed: a signed statement of accuracy on our letterhead, translator identified, formatted so the examiner can lay the English against the original line by line. Where the destination country requires an apostille under the Hague Convention, we tell you plainly what the apostille must attach to, the original, the notarization or the translation itself, because clients lose weeks to getting that sequence backward. For non-Hague destinations we map the consular legalization chain instead, step by step, before you spend money on the wrong stamp.

Speed is not an add-on here, it is the point. Registry extracts expire; many banks and foreign authorities refuse an extract older than three or six months, which means the translation has a shelf life too and a slow vendor can force you to buy the document twice. Send us the file and a firm price is in your inbox within half an hour, with a delivery date we treat as a commitment. Short certificates routinely turn around same day. Our standing with the American Translators Association, our seat in GALA and our place in the North American Translation Alliance are listed on the credentials page, for the compliance teams who verify vendors before trusting them, as they should.

The Languages Company Charters Arrive In

Formation files track investment flows: Chinese business licenses and articles of association for subsidiaries and bank onboarding, escrituras from Spain and Latin America, German registry extracts read by linguists who decode HRB numbers on sight, Japanese commercial register copies, Kbis extracts and statuts, and Arabic incorporation deeds from Gulf free zones. The full roster passes 80 languages, and every pair gets the same double review.

Formation Files From Every Corner of the Country

The requests arrive from wherever companies register and lawyers file: Philadelphia's corporate and immigration bar, Atlanta firms onboarding international parents, Albany, at the doorstep of New York State's filing machinery, and Greenville, where European and Asian manufacturers keep planting Southeast operations. Wherever the deadline lives, the work is remote, encrypted and on time.