Last updated: June 2026
The spouse visa financial requirement falls over on translation more often than on income. People with comfortably sufficient salaries get refused because their payslips, in the language of the country they earn in, weren't translated to UKVI's standard. The £29,000 threshold is the easy bit. The procedural part — six months of matching payslips, an employer letter, bank statements that line up — is where most files actually wobble. This is what to translate, what to pair it with, and where the currency notes matter.
Under Category A, six months of consecutive payslips ending no more than 28 days before application date. Under Category B, twelve months. Every payslip in the window in a non-English language needs certified translation. Gaps in the run trigger an RFI even when the income itself is fine.
Category A is the cleaner of the two: the applicant or sponsor has been with the same employer at the same income level for at least six months, and the financial requirement is met by salary alone. Six payslips, one per month, covering the six months immediately before application.
Category B is the route for people whose income varies, whose employment changed inside the year, or whose income relies on multiple sources. The window stretches to twelve months and the calculation becomes a moving average. Twelve payslips minimum, and more if the employment switched mid-period.
The rule for translation is the same in both: every payslip in the window must be in English to submit, and any payslip in a non-English language needs certified translation. A spouse working in Spain submits twelve months of Spanish nomina payslips, fully translated. A spouse working in Saudi Arabia submits six months of Arabic payslips, fully translated. A spouse working in India submits six months of payslips that may already be English (most multinationals) or may be in Hindi or a state language (some PSU and local employers).
The gap issue catches more applicants than the language issue. A payslip from June is missing because the employer issued it late. Five out of six are translated, the sixth isn't. UKVI reads the gap as five months of evidence, not six, and the run fails the Category A test.
Each payslip's net pay must match the credit on the bank statement for the same month, and the gross pay must match the figures referenced in the employer letter. If any of the three don't reconcile, UKVI reads the file as inconsistent regardless of which language the documents are in.
The financial requirement check is a reconciliation exercise, and the translation work has to support it.
The employer letter, in English (or translated if not), states the applicant's gross salary, employment start date, contract type and current position. UKVI uses it to anchor what the payslips should show.
Each payslip in the window then has to align with that anchor: gross pay roughly consistent month to month, taxes and deductions making sense, net pay arriving in the bank account named on the bank statement.
Each bank statement in the window has to show the net pay credited on or around the payday named in the contract. The credit description must be transliterated by the translator so the caseworker can match it to the salary line, not left as 'SAL CR' in the source-language script.
This is where a translation that 'looks fine' can still cause a refusal. If the payslip's net pay is 18,500 SAR for May and the bank statement shows a 17,200 SAR credit from the same employer on 25 May, those are inconsistent figures. The translation didn't cause the inconsistency, but a translation that doesn't surface the discrepancy in a translator's note (perhaps the difference is a one-off deduction explained on the payslip itself) leaves the caseworker to wonder, and wondering caseworkers send RFIs.
Foreign-currency payslips keep their original-currency figures on the translation. UKVI does its own conversion to GBP using the OANDA rate on the date of decision. The translator should not pre-convert to GBP; that overreaches and can make the figures look inconsistent with UKVI's own calculation.
There is a temptation, when translating a Saudi or Indian or Spanish payslip, to add a GBP figure next to each riyal, rupee or euro line so the caseworker can 'see at a glance' that the salary clears £29,000. This is a mistake.
UKVI's published practice is to convert using OANDA on the date the caseworker decides, not the date the payslip was issued, not the date you applied, not the date the translation was prepared. A pre-converted GBP figure in the translation will almost always be wrong by the time the caseworker reads it, and the discrepancy between your translator's GBP and UKVI's OANDA GBP makes the file look unreliable.
What the translator should do is keep the original currency exactly as printed, including the currency symbol and any decimal-comma convention used in the source country. A Spanish payslip with '€2.450,00' should appear in the translation as '€2,450.00' with a translator's note clarifying the decimal convention if needed. The currency stays the source currency throughout.
The one exception is payslips that themselves print two currencies (an Indian salary slip issued in INR with a USD-equivalent column for an expat). Both columns appear in the translation as printed. Neither is dropped, neither is recalculated.
A standard 6-month payslip bundle is 6 to 12 pages depending on payslip format. At typical UK rates of £12.99–£25 per page, expect £80–£250 for the payslips alone, with the employer letter, bank statements, marriage certificate and other documents adding to the total visa-file translation cost.
Payslips are usually single-page documents, so a six-month bundle is six pages at the low end. Some employers issue payslips that run to two pages — a full breakdown of allowances, deductions and statutory contributions — which doubles the page count to twelve.
The genuine variable is whether the payslips are bundled with the rest of the file in a single order. A provider quoting £15 per page on 6 standalone payslips charges £90 and prepares one statement of accuracy. The same provider quoting the whole spouse file — 6 payslips, 6 bank statements (30 pages), one employer letter, one marriage certificate — prepares a single statement of accuracy covering everything and usually offers a bundle rate, bringing the per-page cost down.
Turnaround for payslips is fast: most providers deliver six payslips inside a working day. The bottleneck on a spouse-visa file is the bank statements, not the payslips. Ordering everything together so the provider can run them in parallel is faster and cheaper than splitting orders.
If the payslip is fully in English — header, body, currency, deductions — no translation is needed. Many multinationals in India, the Gulf and Western Europe issue English payslips for international staff. Check that every line is English, not just the header.
If the letter is in a non-English language, yes. The employer letter is one of the key evidence items for Category A and B and has to be fully translated, including the company letterhead, the signatory's name and position, and any company stamp on the page.
Order a replacement from the employer's payroll department. UKVI doesn't accept 'gap-and-explain' replies on Category A; the six consecutive months have to be complete. A reissued payslip from the employer is treated as the original for translation purposes.
Yes, exactly as printed. The bank account number on the payslip should match the account number on the bank statements, and the translation has to preserve both so the caseworker can verify the match.
Yes, but plan the time. Six payslips usually take one working day to translate. If your biometrics appointment is in two days, order immediately and let the provider know the deadline; same-day delivery is available for short bundles.
UKVI-accepted certified translations from £12.99 per page. Statement of accuracy included. 24-hour delivery.