Skilled Worker Visa with Your Family: Which Documents Need Translating?

The main applicant's own pack is covered in our Skilled Worker visa document checklist: degree, transcript, sometimes a criminal record certificate. If your qualification is the thing your sponsorship rests on, our academic transcript translation guide goes through that in detail.

The family side is where people underestimate the job. Each dependant makes their own application and has to show how they're related to you, and the Home Office reads every one of those applications on its own. A couple with two children is four applications, and each one needs its own proof. The documents themselves are usually short. There are just a lot of them, and the people who come out of this with a sensible bill are the ones who list everything before ordering anything.

If you're married, this is the easy bit: one certificate, usually one or two pages, translated once and submitted with your partner's application. Our marriage certificate translation guide covers the formats that cause trouble, like multi-page registry extracts and certificates with handwritten annotations.

Unmarried partners have the heavier job. Two years of living together is proved the slow way: a tenancy here, a utility bill there, a bank letter to both of you at the same address, spread across the whole two years. Each of those is a page, and none of them was written with the Home Office in mind. Pick a few strong documents spaced through the period rather than translating every gas bill since 2023. Our guide to relationship evidence translation shows how to choose them.

The birth certificate is the core document, and it should be the full version naming both parents. Short-form extracts that only show the child's name and date of birth don't prove the relationship, and a translation can't add details the original doesn't have. Our birth certificate translation guide covers the common formats country by country.

The rules expect both parents to be in the UK or applying together. If one parent is staying behind, the application has to explain why, and the answers usually come on paper: a custody or guardianship order, evidence that you have sole responsibility for the child's upbringing, or a death certificate. Court orders can run to several pages, and our guide to court document translation explains how to translate the order that matters without paying for the whole file. If the situation is complicated, it's worth speaking to an immigration adviser before you apply.

This is where the page count grows. The requirement doesn't stop at the main applicant: an adult partner applying with you, or joining you later, needs the same certificates. A nurse who trained in one country and worked in another, married to a partner who studied abroad, can easily need four police certificates between them, from four different authorities in four different formats. Officialdom has never once agreed on a template.

Police certificates also go out of date quickly in practice, so order them early but translate them once you know which versions you'll submit. Our police clearance certificate translation guide covers the formats we see most, from Indian PCCs to Pakistani character certificates and Chinese no-criminal-record certificates.

Here's the best news in this whole guide: if your employer ticks the box on your certificate of sponsorship confirming they'll cover your family's costs for the first month, you don't need to show the money at all. No statements, no translations. The cheapest translation is the one you don't need, so ask your sponsor before you order anything.

If you do have to show the funds and they're in an account abroad, the statement needs to cover the full 28-day period, with day 28 falling within 31 days of the application. Translate the statements that cover that window and nothing older. Our bank statement translation guide explains what caseworkers check line by line.

For nurses, doctors, dentists and allied health professionals, the professional regulator comes before the Home Office. The NMC, GMC and HCPC each have their own document lists, and the professional file tends to be long: a full training transcript, clinical placement records, a registration certificate and a certificate of good standing from every regulator you've been registered with. Check each regulator's current list before ordering, as they differ on what they want and in what form. Our medical translation service handles regulator files as well as visa ones.

The dependant rules have also changed for some roles. Care workers and senior care workers who started their sponsored job on or after 11 March 2024 generally can't bring dependants, and from 22 July 2025 overseas recruitment into care worker roles closed. Since that date, most jobs below degree level carry a similar restriction for new applicants. There are narrow exceptions, such as a child born in the UK, so check the current guidance before anyone books flights.

Translation is priced per page, not per person, so the family discount is really an efficiency discount: get everything right first time and nothing gets done twice. A few things help.

Send everything in one order. The whole family's documents go through the same team at the same time, and the names come out spelled the same way on every translation. That matters more than people think: if your son is Mohammed on one translation and Muhammad on another, a caseworker will notice. Tell us the spelling on each person's passport and we'll use it. Our guide to names spelled differently across documents covers why.

Translate only the pages you're relying on. Every document includes two free revisions, so a typo in a date doesn't cost you another order. If you're unsure whether something needs translating at all, send it to us on WhatsApp or by email and we'll tell you before you pay. You can also get an instant quote by uploading the files.

Plenty of families stagger the move: the worker goes first, finds a flat, works out which school is least terrifying, and the family follows a few months later. That's allowed, and the translations made for your partner and children don't go stale while they wait.

One thing to watch is applications made inside the UK, such as a switch of route, an extension or eventually settlement. Under paragraph 39B of the Immigration Rules, in-country applications need the translation certified by a qualified translator with their credentials stated. Our translations include that as standard, but older ones from elsewhere might not. Our guides to reusing translations for a visa extension and the ILR document translation checklist explain what to check when the time comes.