What MANJAZ Is — and What It Will Not Pretend to Be
Most company pages are written to impress. This one is written to be checked. It sets out plainly who we are, what falls inside our work and what falls outside it, the professional standards we model our process on, and — just as important — the badges and numbers we will not put on a website because we cannot prove them to you. Read it the way you would read a contract, not a brochure.
- A Dubai-based legal and corporate translation service, described without borrowed credentials
- Every claim on this page is either general knowledge, an official requirement, or our own stated practice — kept apart on purpose
- What we decline to claim matters as much as what we do — no invented awards, counts or accreditations
- Tools to judge us — and any other provider — put directly in your hands
- Dubai-based, UAE-wide service
- Arabic & English
- Clear guidance on every document
- Direct request, no middlemen
Why an About page should be the most careful page on the site
MANJAZ Corporate & Translation Services L.L.C. is a Dubai company that translates legal and corporate documents between Arabic and other languages, for people and businesses who need those documents accepted by a court, a notary, a ministry, an embassy, a university or a bank. That single sentence is the honest core of what we are. Everything else on this page exists to explain, qualify or limit it — because in this profession the damage is rarely done by what a translator writes in the document. It is done by what a company writes about itself.
A translation buyer is usually asked to trust three things at once: that the people are qualified, that the process is sound, and that the finished document will be accepted. The temptation for any provider is to answer all three with confident marketing — a headline number of translators, an accreditation logo, a promise that every document will be accepted. We have taken the opposite decision. Where we can prove something, we say it plainly. Where a claim would need proof we cannot show you on a public page, we leave it out rather than dress it up, and we tell you how to verify it for your own matter.
This page keeps three kinds of statement carefully apart, and it labels them as it goes. Some things here are general knowledge about how professional translation works anywhere. Some are official requirements set by UAE authorities — for example, that documents presented to UAE courts must be in Arabic or translated by a legal translator approved by the UAE Ministry of Justice. And some are simply how we choose to run our own service. Blurring these three is the oldest trick in the trade: it lets a company borrow the authority of a law, or of an international standard, to describe its own marketing. We would rather you always knew which one you were reading.
What we are, and what we are not
What we are
- A translation service focused on legal and corporate documents, where accuracy carries consequences and the receiving authority is the real audience
- A team that reads a document, and names the receiving authority, before quoting — because the recipient defines what a compliant translation looks like
- A service that works to a published, staged quality model — translation, then independent revision by a second linguist, then final verification
- A provider that writes its confidentiality and data-handling terms down, rather than promising discretion in a sentence
- Candid about limits: where a document needs something we do not provide, we say so and point you to who does
What we are not
- Not the authority that decides whether your translation is accepted — that decision belongs to the court, notary or ministry receiving it
- Not the body that attests or legalises documents — attestation is a separate step performed by ministries and consulates, not by a translator
- Not a holder of certificates we have not earned — we describe the standards we model our work on, and we hold no certificate to them
- Not a machine-translation shop dressed as a human one — human translation and machine output with a cleanup pass are different products
- Not able to guarantee that any single document will be accepted everywhere — acceptance depends on each recipient's own rules, and honesty forbids that promise
The scope of our work — and where its edges are
The documents we handle are the ones whose wording has to survive scrutiny: contracts and agreements, memoranda and articles of association, board and shareholder resolutions, trade licences, court pleadings and judgments, powers of attorney, birth, marriage and death certificates, academic degrees and transcripts, financial statements and audit reports, medical reports, immigration and residency papers, patents and intellectual-property filings, and the confidentiality agreements that often travel with them. What these share is not a subject but a stake: each is read by someone empowered to accept it or send it back.
We work across a broad range of language pairs, always with Arabic on one side or the other, since Arabic is what UAE authorities require. A point of principle here, applied without exception: on our pages a language is only a language. We name it — English, Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Hebrew, Russian and the rest — and we attach no flag, national emblem or political framing to any of them, because a translation service exists to move meaning between tongues, not to make statements about the peoples who speak them.
The edges of that scope matter more than the centre, so we mark them clearly. First, we translate written documents; spoken interpreting — a witness giving evidence, a hearing conducted in Arabic — is a distinct professional service with its own competences, and where a matter needs it we say so rather than stretch our own label over it. Second, translation is not attestation. Rendering a document into Arabic and authenticating that document for cross-border use are two different acts: a foreign judgment intended for enforcement in the UAE, for instance, needs attestation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in addition to its Arabic translation. We can help you sequence the two correctly, but the attestation itself is performed by the relevant authority, not by us.
Third, and this is a boundary many providers leave deliberately vague: what we deliver as a human legal translation is human work, translated and independently revised by qualified linguists. Raw machine translation followed by a light cleanup pass is a different product entirely, governed by a separate professional framework, and we will not present one to you as the other. If a task is genuinely suited to a machine-assisted approach — and some are — that is a conversation we have openly, not a substitution made quietly behind the scenes.
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Certified, sworn, notarised, attested: what each one actually means
| Term | What it actually is | Who stands behind it | When it is asked for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certified translation | A translation delivered with a signed statement that it is accurate and complete, plus the translator's or agency's signature and seal | The translator or agency making the statement — they put their name to its accuracy | Many embassies, universities and administrative submissions |
| Sworn / legal translator (UAE) | A translation into Arabic by a translator registered on the Ministry of Justice roll for that language pair, working personally | The Ministry of Justice register, and the registered translator personally under the profession's law | UAE courts, notaries and most government bodies |
| Notarised translation | A notary authenticates a signature or an identity connected to the document — it is not a check of the translation's linguistic accuracy | A notary public, whose act concerns authentication, not language | Where a recipient wants a notary's authentication on top of the translation |
| Attested / legalised document | Authentication of the document or its signatures by ministries and consulates — a step separate from translation entirely | The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and other competent authorities | Cross-border use, and foreign judgments to be enforced in the UAE |
A credential you cannot verify is not a reassurance; it is a risk someone has handed to you. We would rather hand you the means to check.
How we approach a legal translation
The first principle is that no document is finished on one person's say-so. There is a published international answer to what a professional translation service should look like — the ISO 17100 standard, issued in 2015 to succeed the earlier European standard, which describes translation not as one job but as a sequence of named roles: a translator who drafts and self-checks, a second linguist who revises the target against the source line by line, and a final verification against what was agreed. We describe ISO 17100 as the model our workflow follows. We hold no certificate to it, and we will not imply otherwise; the value is in working the way the model prescribes, and the mandatory heart of that model — an independent second linguist, never the drafter marking their own work — is the part we treat as untouchable.
The second principle is accountability with a name on it. A translation for a UAE court or notary is not merely a good rendering; it is an act performed by a person the state has registered to perform it. Whether a given translation is admissible before UAE authorities is a licensing question, answered by the Ministry of Justice roll for the relevant language pair — not by any provider's marketing. We scope every court- and notary-bound request against that requirement, we are transparent about what a specific document needs, and where it matters to you we would rather you confirm the registration behind your own matter than take a slogan on trust.
The third principle is that we say no when no is the honest answer. We decline to guarantee that a document will be accepted, because acceptance is the recipient's decision and no one else's. We decline to drop the revision stage to hit an impossible deadline, because the time saved reappears at the counter. We decline to publish a rate card as if price were a fixed fact, because an honest quote depends on the specific pair, length, purpose, format and certification your document needs. A provider that never says no to anything is telling you something about how seriously it takes the word yes.
None of these principles is exotic; what is uncommon is stating them where a client can hold us to them. We publish them precisely so you can. If any experience with us contradicts what is written here, that is a gap you are entitled to raise, and a gap we would want to know about — a stated practice is only worth anything if it can be checked against reality.
The vocabulary of trust, defined honestly
- A standard modelled vs a certificate held
- A provider can follow the way a standard prescribes work without being audited and certified to it. Following the model is a description of practice; holding a certificate is a claim about an external audit. Only the second is a credential, and only if a recognised body actually issued it.
- Independent revision
- A second qualified linguist compares the translation against the source, segment by segment, for meaning, omissions, figures and terminology. It is the mandatory step in the staged model, and a self-check by the translator does not substitute for it.
- Certified translation
- A translation carrying a signed statement of accuracy with the translator's or agency's signature and seal. It is a declaration by the person who made it — useful and often required, but distinct from a court-admissible sworn translation.
- Sworn / legal translator
- In the UAE, a translator registered on the Ministry of Justice roll for a language pair, who performs the work personally and carries a statutory duty of confidentiality. Whether a translation is court-admissible turns on this registration, not on wording.
- Attestation / legalisation
- Authentication of a document or its signatures by ministries and consulates, entirely separate from translation. A foreign judgment to be enforced in the UAE, for example, needs attestation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation as well as an Arabic translation.
- Confidentiality undertaking / NDA
- A written commitment binding those who handle a file to keep it confidential. In professional translation it can be signed before work begins, and it binds project coordinators and linguists alike, not only the company as an abstraction.
- Controller and processor
- When you send documents containing personal data for translation, data-protection law treats you as the party who controls that data and the provider as the party who processes it on your instructions — a relationship the law expects to be set out in writing.
- Acceptance
- The receiving authority's decision to take a document as compliant. It rests on that authority's own rules — certified, sworn, notarised or attested — and no translator can guarantee it in advance. Anyone who promises that acceptance is assured is promising something outside their control.
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Our confidentiality practice, stated as commitments
The documents that reach a legal translator are among the most private things a person or company owns: divorce papers, medical files, shareholder disputes, transactions not yet announced. A promise of discretion in a single sentence is not a control; a control is something specific you can hold us to. So we state ours as commitments. Files are assigned on a need-to-know basis, so the people who can open your documents are the people working on them. Where the matter calls for it, a confidentiality undertaking is signed before work begins, binding the coordinators and linguists on the file. Transfer moves over secure channels rather than long open email chains. And retention has an end: what we agreed with you in writing governs how long files are kept and when they are deleted.
Two further commitments deserve stating outright. First, your documents are not pasted into public machine-translation or public AI tools, because doing so is a disclosure to a system whose storage, access and reuse you never agreed to. Second, confidentiality in this profession has a statutory dimension we take seriously: the UAE has a federal Personal Data Protection Law governing how personal data is processed, and where your documents contain personal data the law contemplates written terms between you as the controller and us as the processor. The UAE also runs more than one data-protection regime — the federal law alongside the separate framework of the Dubai International Financial Centre and others — so which rules apply can depend on where your entity is established, and we confirm that per engagement rather than assume one law fits every file.
If this is the way you want your documents handled, tell us what you need. Send the document with the receiving authority named, and we will come back with a scoped, written plan — no obligation.
Request a translationHow to evaluate any translation provider — including us
- Ask whether a second, independent linguist revises the translation before delivery — and whether the drafter is ever allowed to revise their own work (they should not be)
- If a provider names a standard or a certificate, ask which body issued it and for the certificate itself — a real credential can be shown, a borrowed one cannot
- Ask who exactly will open your file, and whether assignment is limited to those who need to see it
- Ask whether your documents are entered into public AI or machine-translation tools, and get the answer in writing if it matters to you
- Ask whether a written confidentiality and data-processing term is available for you to sign before work starts
- For court or notary work, confirm that the translation will be produced under a translator registered on the Ministry of Justice roll for your language pair
- Ask what the quote actually includes — certification, the official seal, formatting to match the original, and revisions if an error is found
- Ask how the same defined term or name is kept consistent across a set of related documents
- Ask when your files are deleted, and whether you can request earlier deletion — a provider with a real practice answers without hesitating
Trust claims worth a second look — ours included
The mistakeA promise that acceptance is guaranteed by a court, embassy, bank or ministry.
The fixAcceptance is the recipient's decision, made against the recipient's own rules. A provider can prepare a document correctly for a named authority; it cannot guarantee the authority's verdict. Treat the promise as a warning sign, not a reassurance.
The mistakeAn ISO logo on the footer with no standard number, no issuing body and no certificate to show.
The fixAsk which standard and which accredited body, and to see the certificate. Following a standard's model is legitimate and worth stating — but it is a different claim from holding a certificate, and only the certificate is a credential.
The mistakeImpressive round numbers — thousands of clients, dozens of languages, decades of combined experience — with nothing behind them.
The fixCounts are the easiest thing on a website to invent and the hardest for you to check. What actually protects your document is the process and the people on your specific file, not a statistic. We publish no such counts for that reason.
The mistakeA single "from" price presented as if it were the cost of your job.
The fixA genuine quote depends on the language pair, the length, the purpose, the formatting and whether certification or attestation is needed. A headline figure that ignores all of that is a hook, not an estimate. Ask for a scoped quote against your actual document.
The mistakeThe phrase "Ministry of Justice" used loosely to imply an official blessing of the whole company.
The fixThe Ministry registers individual translators for specific language pairs; it does not bless a company as a brand. The precise, checkable question is whether the translator on your matter is registered for your pair. Ask it that way.
The mistake"Same-day" or fixed turnaround promised before anyone has read the document.
The fixSpeed that is promised sight-unseen usually comes from somewhere, and too often it comes from the revision stage. A realistic timeline follows a look at the document and the deadline; a promise made before that look is a promise about nothing.
What honesty looks like in four common situations
You have a cheaper quote from another provider and ask why ours differs
What is usually neededWe walk you through the checklist rather than defend a number. Does the cheaper quote include certification and the seal, or are those added later? Is it priced per word or per page, and does it include an independent revision stage or stop at a single draft? Is a rush fee buried in it, and what happens if an error is found after delivery? The aim is a like-for-like comparison, so you are choosing on the same terms, not on a headline.
You are anxious about a sensitive commercial contract or personal documents
What is usually neededWe put the confidentiality commitments in front of you before you send anything: a confidentiality undertaking signed before work begins where the matter calls for it, secure transfer instead of open email, assignment limited to the people working on the file, no public AI or machine-translation tools, and a defined retention and deletion position. You should expect the same specifics from anyone who handles your files, and you should be able to get them in writing.
You cannot read the target language and worry the translation may be wrong
What is usually neededThis is the most reasonable worry a buyer has, and the honest answer is not "trust us." It is a process: an independent second linguist compares every line against the source, agreed names and terms are locked so nothing drifts, and the deliverable is verified against what you asked for. Beyond that, you can judge quality yourself against a short checklist — faithful meaning, natural reading, consistent terminology, accurate numbers, untranslated names preserved — even without reading a word of the target language.
You need a certified translation for a court filing on a very short deadline
What is usually neededWe tell you at intake what is compressible and what is not. Setup, sequencing and running independent documents in parallel can be accelerated; the independent revision and final verification cannot be dropped without moving the risk into the courtroom. We also confirm before committing that the certification the court expects is included and that the format matches — and if the deadline cannot be met with the checks intact, we say so rather than promise it and fail you.
Not sure which route applies to your document?
Honest answers to the questions clients ask about who we are
We follow the process. We describe ISO 17100 as the model our workflow follows — staged translation, independent revision by a second linguist, and final verification — and we hold no certificate to it. That distinction is deliberate and we will not blur it: following a standard's model is a description of how we work; holding a certificate is a claim about an external audit, and we make only the claim that is true.
Acceptance is the receiving authority's decision, made against its own rules, so no honest provider can guarantee it in advance. What we can do is prepare the document correctly for the authority you name — the right kind of certification, the format it expects, and, for UAE courts and notaries, a translation produced under a translator registered on the Ministry of Justice roll for your language pair. Tell us the destination at the start, and we build to its requirements.
Legal and corporate work is assigned to qualified linguists, and the published model we work to sets out competence requirements — a relevant qualification or documented professional experience, with evidence kept on file. Rather than publish a headcount you cannot verify, we would rather you check the point that matters for your matter: for court-bound work, whether the assigned translator is registered on the Ministry of Justice roll for your language pair, which is a specific, checkable fact.
Yes to confidentiality as a set of commitments, not a slogan: need-to-know assignment, secure transfer, no public AI or machine-translation tools, and a defined retention and deletion position. A confidentiality undertaking can be signed before work begins where the matter calls for it. Where your documents contain personal data, UAE data-protection law also contemplates written terms between you as the controller and us as the processor, which we treat as part of the service.
We quote against your actual document rather than from a rate card, because an honest price depends on the language pair, the length, the subject and its complexity, the formatting, whether certification or attestation is needed, and the deadline. A quote may be higher than another because it includes things a cheaper one leaves out — the independent revision stage, the certification and seal, formatting that mirrors the original, and corrections if an error is found. Ask what each quote includes, and compare like for like.
A certified translation carries the translator's or agency's signed statement of accuracy with a seal. A sworn translation, for UAE courts and notaries, is produced by a translator registered on the Ministry of Justice roll. A notarised translation adds a notary's authentication of a signature or identity, not of the language. And attestation or legalisation is authentication of the document itself by ministries and consulates — a step separate from translation. Which you need is defined by the authority receiving the document, so we confirm it for your destination.
Our work is written document translation. Spoken interpreting — for a hearing or a witness — is a distinct professional service, and we say so rather than stretch our label over it. Attestation and legalisation are performed by ministries and consulates, not by a translator; we can help you sequence attestation and translation in the right order for your destination, but the attestation itself is the authority's act. Being clear about these edges is part of being honest about what we are.
Your documents are not pasted into public AI or public machine-translation tools, because that is a disclosure to a system whose storage and reuse you never agreed to. What we deliver as a human legal translation is human work — drafted and independently revised by qualified linguists. If a task is genuinely suited to a machine-assisted approach, that is a conversation we have with you openly, never a substitution made quietly.
Because in legal translation the buyer usually cannot verify the target text, and that gap is exactly where inflated claims live. Telling you what we will not claim — no invented counts, no borrowed certificates, no promise that acceptance is assured — is more useful to you than another superlative, and it gives you a fixed line to hold us to. A company willing to state its limits in public is easier to trust than one that appears to have none.
Official references
This page is general information about translation services, not legal advice. Requirements are set by the authority receiving your document and can change — always confirm with the receiving authority or ask us to check for your specific case.
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