The MANJAZ Question Index

Start from what you are holding. If your question is about one specific document, the document's own page answers it best, because the requirements attach to the document, not to translation in general. If it is about a particular language, the language page covers the pairs and the third-language wrinkles. If it is a general question about certification, attestation order or courts, stay on this hub for the short answer and follow the link to the Translation FAQ answers page for the full treatment.

An apostille on its own does not meet the UAE's published requirements. The Hague Conference status table for the Apostille Convention does not list the UAE among its contracting parties, and the Convention works only between parties. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes its own chain for documents issued abroad: the issuing country's foreign ministry, then the UAE mission there, then attestation inside the UAE. In practice the certificate your home country calls an apostille is often the foreign-ministry step of that chain, but the UAE embassy step and the ministry step must still follow. Services advertised as a UAE apostille are consular legalisation under another name.

As a rule, no. Arabic is the language of the courts: the UAE Government portal states that documents presented to the courts must be in Arabic, otherwise translated into Arabic by a legal translator approved by the Ministry of Justice, and the Civil Procedure Law makes Arabic the language of proceedings. Since the start of 2023 there is a narrow exception: a specific decision by the President of the Federal Judicial Council, or the head of the relevant local judiciary, may allow proceedings and judgments in English in certain cases. That is an exemption granted case by case, not an entitlement you can claim by asking. The free-zone courts are a separate world, covered in the language-regimes panel below.

Under Federal Decree-Law No. 22 of 2022 the person who certifies must be an individual translator registered on the list held at the Ministry of Justice and licensed by the competent authority in the emirate — and registration is granted per language, not in general. The law obliges the translator to place their registration number and the translation house name on the documents they produce, and the current penalty schedule fines a translator who works outside their licensed language pair. So the practical check begins with the document itself: it should name an individual and a registration number. Ask the provider which languages the registration covers and expect a specific answer, not a reassurance. If you need independent confirmation, the Ministry of Justice is the authority that holds the register.

This is genuinely unsettled, so treat any confident answer online with caution — including where you read it. The statutory rule addresses documents issued in a foreign language; a contract that already contains a full Arabic version arguably meets the Arabic-language requirement for that content. But no official source we can cite squarely resolves whether an onshore court will accept a bilingual original without a separate certified Arabic translation, and practice can vary by court and by how the two columns relate. Our honest advice is to confirm with the specific court or receiving authority before you rely on the bilingual original, and to have a certified Arabic version ready if there is any doubt.

A third-language document faces two translation moments, not one. To enter the attestation chain at all, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requires the original to be in Arabic or English, or accompanied by a legally certified translation — so a document in Russian, Chinese or Urdu usually needs a certified translation early, simply to be processable. Separately, the Arabic translation that a UAE court or department will work from is normally produced at the end, against the fully stamped document. The practical point is to plan for two steps and confirm the order for your destination before you commission anything.

No. A language is a language here — a system of writing and meaning to be rendered accurately — and nothing more. We attach no flags, emblems or national or political framing to any language we work in, and that principle is uniform across every pair without exception. What differs between languages is strictly technical: the script and its direction, the way names transliterate, whether the source needs a certified translation to enter the attestation chain, and which registered translator holds that pair. If you are choosing a provider, treat any political colouring of a language name as a warning sign; the work is linguistic and legal, not editorial.

It depends on where the document lives. Before the onshore courts and most government bodies, Arabic is the operative language, so the Arabic text is what the authority reads and relies on. But this is not a universal law of nature: in the Dubai International Financial Centre, the rules provide that where an Arabic translation of a judgment or order is required for service elsewhere in the UAE, the English version prevails if the two conflict. For contracts, the parties can agree which language governs, and that clause matters enormously — decide it deliberately in the drafting, not in a dispute.

By fixing the spelling against your existing official records before any certifying happens, and holding it constant. Transliteration between Arabic and Latin script has no single correct answer — the same name can be romanised several defensible ways — so what authorities actually check is consistency. The translation must match the spelling already on your passport, Emirates ID and trade licence, because a single divergent letter is among the most common causes of rejection at the counter. Send those reference spellings with the documents; where your own records disagree with one another, we flag it before certifying rather than choosing silently and letting the mismatch surface later.

For the languages we work in most, yes, and it is worth reading before you commission. A language page sets out the document types that most often move in that pair, the direction-specific issues — how the script behaves alongside Arabic, how numbers and Latin names sit inside Arabic text — and the practical points that recur for that community in the UAE. This hub deliberately keeps the language answers short and sends you there. If a language has no page yet, ask us directly rather than assuming it is unavailable.