Alberta Translation FAQ: IRCC, AAIP, ATIA, Pricing, Driver's Licence, Turnaround

Yes. For IRCC applications, regular certified translation is usually sufficient.

For most immigration files submitted to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, you do not need the more expensive ATIA route. Regular certified translation is the normal option for birth certificates, marriage certificates, police certificates, diplomas, transcripts, military records, employment letters, and other supporting documents.

Each translation we issue for IRCC is accompanied by a signed translator declaration, full contact details, and the seal of the agency. IRCC reviewers can verify our translators if needed. We have been issuing translations for IRCC applications without rejections related to format.

If your specific receiving program (such as AAIP, refugee files routed through specific case-officer teams, or WES via IRCC) names a stricter requirement, send that instruction with your file and we will switch you to the ATIA route at no extra fee. Read the full IRCC guide, or go directly to birth certificate, marriage certificate, police certificate, or AAIP guides.

AAIP usually requires ATIA-certified translation, not regular certified translation.

If the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program asks for translation of your supporting documents, regular certified translation is generally not enough. This is one of the clearest cases where ATIA-certified translation is the safer and more appropriate choice from the start.

The reason is procedural: AAIP wants verifiable provincial certification, and the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta (ATIA) is the recognized provincial body. An ATIA translator carries a registration number that the program can look up. Regular certified translations - even from experienced agencies - do not always pass this verification step.

If you are not sure whether your specific AAIP stream requires ATIA, send us the requirement page from your case officer and we will confirm before you pay. Read the full AAIP guide.

The difference is who certifies the translation and which receiving body needs that level.

Regular certified translation is the standard option for most Canadian official-use cases (IRCC, schools, employers, most banks). It includes a translator declaration of accuracy, full translator contact information, and the agency seal. Price starts at CA$59 for a one-page document, turnaround is 1-2 business days.

ATIA-certified translation is completed and stamped by a translator registered with the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta. It carries a provincial certification number. Required by AAIP, Service Alberta driver licence exchange, some courts, and some professional licensing bodies (APEGA, CPA, NDEB, PEBC, Alberta Education). Price starts at CA$99, turnaround 2-5 business days depending on language availability.

Notarized translation adds a notary public's verification on top of the translation. The translator swears the affidavit before the notary. This route is used when the receiving body specifically asks for notarization, or when the source language has no ATIA-certified translator available. Price starts at CA$99, turnaround 2-5 business days.

Read the full guide on certified vs ATIA or see certified vs notarized.

A regular certified translation starts from CA$59 per page for a standard one-page personal document.

Typical 2026 starting prices for the most common requests:

• Regular certified translation: from CA$59 per page (birth, marriage, police certificate; school transcript; passport stamps from CA$5 per stamp with a CA$59 minimum per language).
• ATIA-certified translation: from CA$99 per page (required for AAIP, Service Alberta driver licence exchange, and certain professional bodies).
• Notarized translation: from CA$99 per page (used when notarization is specifically requested).
• Business / technical / legal translation: from CA$0.10 to CA$0.25 per word depending on language and subject.

Final price depends on document length, language pair, formatting (tables, stamps, handwriting), and turnaround. We quote in writing before any work starts. Taxes (GST 5%) are not included in the prices above. See the full pricing page.

Per-word pricing applies to business and technical translation, starting from CA$0.10 to CA$0.25 per source word.

Personal documents (certificates, licences, transcripts) are priced per document or per page, not per word - that is industry standard. The fixed-price model exists because short certificates carry a lot of certification overhead (declaration, stamp, layout) that does not scale linearly with word count.

For business and technical work, our 2026 ranges are: CA$0.10-$0.14 per word for general business material, CA$0.15-$0.20 for legal and marketing, CA$0.18-$0.25 for technical, medical, and patent translation. ATIA-certified business translation is priced separately on request.

If you need a price for a specific document, send it to us - a real quote takes ten minutes and is much more accurate than averaging per-word rates. See the pricing page or upload your file for a quote.

Upload a photo of both sides of your foreign driver's licence and we deliver an ATIA-certified translation in 2-5 business days, starting from CA$99.

For Service Alberta licence exchange at any Registry Agent, the typical requirement is ATIA-certified translation. Some agents also accept notarized translations sworn before a notary public; we produce both formats. ATIA is the safer choice because registry examiners recognize the certification stamp on sight.

The order steps:

1. Photograph or scan both sides of the foreign licence (corners must be readable).
2. Upload through our online form.
3. Approve the quote. Standard turnaround is 2-5 business days for ATIA-certified work.
4. Receive the certified translation by email and mail.
5. Bring the certified translation, the original foreign licence, and your identity documents to any Alberta Registry Agent.

Read the full driver's licence guide.

No. A driver's licence does not automatically require ATIA - it depends on where the translation will be presented.

For Service Alberta licence exchange in Alberta, ATIA certification (or notarization) is typically required. But the same translated licence may be needed for an insurance company, a car rental, a U.S. consulate, a school registration, or an employer - and in those cases a regular certified translation is usually enough.

The rule we follow: the requirement comes from the institution that will receive the document, not from the document type itself. Tell us where the licence translation will go and we confirm the right format before billing.

You need notarized translation only when the receiving body explicitly asks for notarization.

Notarization is not the default option for IRCC, most schools, most employers, or most Alberta provincial agencies. It is used in narrower cases: some U.S. submissions, some foreign embassy applications, some court matters, and cases where the source language has no ATIA-certified translator available.

Because notarization adds time (2-5 business days instead of 1-2) and cost (from CA$99 instead of CA$59), it is best ordered only when it is actually required. If a generic checklist says "notarized translation" without a clear reason, ask the institution first - in many cases regular certified translation will be accepted.

Read the full guide on certified vs notarized translation.

Most regular certified translations are ready in 1 to 2 business days.

Typical 2026 turnaround:

• Regular certified translation (single document): 1-2 business days.
• ATIA-certified translation: 2-5 business days, depending on language availability.
• Notarized translation: 2-5 business days.
• Long business or technical documents: quoted with the project.
• Same-day certified translation: available on request for many common documents; we confirm feasibility before charging the rush fee.

Business days do not include Saturdays, Sundays, or Canadian holidays. If you order on Friday afternoon, count Monday as day one. For urgent immigration deadlines, mention the deadline in the order notes and we will tell you within an hour whether we can meet it.

Our standard turnaround is in business days only - Saturdays, Sundays, and Canadian statutory holidays are not counted.

If you upload a document on Friday at 5 PM with a "1-2 business day" turnaround, the work starts Monday and delivery is Tuesday or Wednesday. For weekend work, we offer paid rush options for certain document types - contact us before paying to confirm feasibility.

Yes. Most Alberta clients order entirely online.

The full online process:

1. Upload your documents through the How to Order form. A clear phone photo is usually enough; you do not need a scanner.
2. Receive a written quote with price, turnaround, and certification level.
3. Approve and pay online (credit/debit card, Interac e-Transfer, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal).
4. Receive the certified translation by email as a stamped PDF.
5. If you need a hard copy, we mail it free of charge within Canada.

Everything is handled online and accepted by IRCC, schools, employers, and Service Alberta. The digital certified PDF is accepted everywhere a paper copy would be.

Read the full guide to choosing the right translation format.

Upload a clear photo of the entire birth certificate (front and back) and we deliver a certified English translation in 1-2 business days, starting from CA$59.

Birth certificates are the single most common document we translate. They are used for immigration (IRCC), passport applications, school registration, name changes, marriage, and legal matters. The certified translation includes every visible element on the original - names, dates, registry numbers, stamps, seals, and back-side notes.

For IRCC applications the regular certified translation is enough; you do not need ATIA unless AAIP specifically asks for it. If the certificate has both a short-form and long-form version, send the long-form - IRCC and most other Canadian receivers prefer it.

See the birth certificate service page.

IRCC does not publish an "approved translator list" - they accept work from any qualified translator. ATIA publishes a public directory of its certified members.

What this means in practice: there is no IRCC list to join. Any agency or independent translator can produce IRCC-acceptable work as long as the four requirements are met (complete translation, translator full name and contact details, signed declaration of accuracy, and a sworn affidavit if the translator is not a member of a recognized association). Our certified translations meet all four.

ATIA does maintain a searchable directory at atia.ab.ca. The translators we use for ATIA-certified work are listed there - if you need to verify, we can give you the certification number and you can look it up before payment.

For Service Alberta driver licence exchange, the registry agents do not maintain a separate "approved" list - they recognize ATIA certification and notarial affidavits.

We serve all of Alberta with full online ordering and mail delivery across the province.

Most clients in Alberta - whether they live in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, St. Albert, Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie, Airdrie, Lloydminster, Fort McMurray, Spruce Grove, Leduc, Camrose, or smaller communities - use the online process. Orders are handled entirely online; the certified translation is the same document wherever in Alberta you order from.

Hard copies are mailed free of charge to any Canadian address via Canada Post. See full contact information.

The most common personal documents are driver's licences, birth certificates, marriage certificates, police certificates, diplomas, transcripts, passports, and immigration records.

These documents are ordered most often for immigration to Canada (IRCC, AAIP), school and university admissions (WES, ICAS), licence exchange (Service Alberta), work permits, name changes after marriage, and court matters. We also translate civil records (divorce, name change), military records, medical records, and identity cards.

For each document type we have a dedicated guide with the specific requirements: driver's licences, birth certificates, marriage certificates, police certificates, passports and stamps, and AAIP packages.

We work with more than 50 languages into English or French for certified translation, and over 250 languages for business and technical translation.

The most common language pairs for certified translation in Alberta: Tagalog/Filipino-English, Punjabi-English, Mandarin Chinese-English, Ukrainian-English, Arabic-English, Russian-English, Hindi-English, Spanish-English, French-English, Persian/Farsi-English, Urdu-English, Vietnamese-English, Tamil-English, Korean-English, Polish-English, and Romanian-English.

For ATIA-certified translation the language list is narrower because it depends on certified-translator availability. If we cannot offer ATIA for your language pair, we offer the notarized route instead, which is acceptable to IRCC, AAIP, and most other Canadian institutions.

For rare and minority languages (Tigrinya, Oromo, Kirundi, Kinyarwanda, Pashto, Dari, Kurdish, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and similar) we have specialized translators on call - the turnaround may be slightly longer but the format is identical.

See the full language list.

A clear scan or phone photo is enough. We do not need the original.

Both IRCC and most other Canadian receiving bodies accept certified translations made from a clear copy of the original document. The certification statement refers to the copy that the translator worked from, not to the physical original. There is no need to mail us your only birth certificate or passport.

What matters is image quality: all four corners visible, no glare on stamps, handwriting readable. If your photo cuts off a corner or has a shadow over a stamp, we will ask for a re-shoot before billing.

For documents with a back side (civil certificates, driver's licences), send both sides even if the back looks blank - registry notes and authentication marks are often there.

Special-use cases should be routed by the receiving institution, not guessed from the document type alone.

Alberta courts may require ATIA-certified translation, notarization, or even a sworn translator depending on the file type. Universities and credential evaluators like WES, ICAS, or IQAS require ATIA-certified work for credential evaluation. Same-day requests need a feasibility check before payment because some language pairs and certification routes cannot be rushed.

Use the relevant guide first and include the exact institution name in your order notes - that is the single best way to avoid a re-do.

Yes. We translate legal, technical, marketing, financial, and corporate materials in addition to personal documents.

Typical business work includes contracts, NDAs, terms of service, privacy policies, technical manuals, product documentation, marketing collateral, websites, employee handbooks, financial statements, and patent applications. We also handle AI translation post-editing (MTPE) for clients who have a draft from ChatGPT, DeepL, or Google Translate and need it brought up to publishable quality.

Business pricing typically starts at CA$0.10 to CA$0.25 per word, depending on language pair, subject matter, urgency, and the number of revision rounds requested. NDA is provided on request, and we never use client material to train public AI models. See the business translation page.

Google Translate output is not certified and is not accepted by IRCC, AAIP, Service Alberta, schools, or any Canadian official body.

Our certified translation includes a signed translator declaration, full contact information, the agency seal, and (for ATIA work) a registered translator number. These elements are exactly what IRCC and AAIP officers look for when accepting or rejecting a file.

Equally important, we catch context errors that machine translation routinely misses: names in handwritten registry entries, dates in non-Gregorian calendars, official designations that change meaning between regions, and back-side stamps that are easy to overlook. Any of these errors can cause an application rejection even when the body of the document looks fine.

We sometimes use AI tools internally as a draft layer, but every word we deliver is reviewed and signed by a qualified human translator.

Credit and debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), Interac e-Transfer, Interac Online, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, cheques, and cash.

All prices are quoted in Canadian dollars (CAD) and exclude GST (5%). You receive an invoice for any payment method. Business clients can request net-15 or net-30 terms after the first paid invoice; corporate accounts are available for ongoing translation work.

For high-value orders (typically over CA$2,000) we accept wire transfer at no additional fee. See the pricing page.

Often yes, for many common documents in major language pairs.

Same-day certified translation depends on three factors: language availability (Punjabi, Mandarin, Ukrainian, Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian are usually feasible same-day), document complexity (a one-page certificate is easy; a 30-page contract is not), and time of day you order (before 11 AM Mountain is usually doable, after 3 PM is harder).

Send the file with "urgent" in your order notes and include your deadline. We confirm feasibility within one hour during business hours before charging any rush fee. ATIA-certified rush is generally not available for the same day because of the certification process - if you have a hard AAIP or Service Alberta deadline, plan for 2-5 business days.

Yes, we translate into French as well as English for certified work.

Certified translation into French is most often requested for Quebec residency applications, Quebec-based universities, and federal documents that need to be presented in French Canada. We also do French-to-English certified translation for documents originally issued in France, Belgium, Switzerland, francophone Africa, and Quebec.

Pricing is the same as English: from CA$59 per page for regular certified, from CA$99 for ATIA-certified, depending on the specific language combination. Upload your document for a quote.