Marriage Certificate Translation for New Zealand Visas

INZ's rule for residence class visas is straightforward: documents not in English must come with a certified English translation, made by someone other than you, your family or your immigration adviser. The translation is certified as correct, signed or stamped by the translator or translation business, and submitted with a copy of the original.

That applies whether you're applying as the Partner of a New Zealander or being included as a partner in someone else's residence application, such as under the Skilled Migrant Category. Your spouse counts as family for these purposes, so the bilingual partner who has been translating menus for you for years still can't sign this one.

This catches people out. INZ assesses partnerships on how you live: a shared address, shared finances and responsibilities, time spent together, and whether family and friends recognise you as a couple. INZ publishes a partnership timeline and evidence checklist to help organise all of it. The marriage certificate helps, but the 12 months of shared life does the heavy lifting.

INZ is romantic in its own way: it would rather see a year of joint power bills than one beautiful wedding photo. If your joint lease, bank letters or utility bills are in another language, they need translating too. Our guide to relationship evidence translation is written for UK visas, but the advice on organising translated evidence carries over.

The standard option is a company-certified translation with a signed statement of accuracy on letterhead, at £16.79 per page. It's the one for residence applications, and it can be delivered within 8 hours at £29.99 per page if your deadline is close.

The named-translator option at £41.99 per page is signed by an individual professional translator who gives their full name, contact details and qualifications, which is what INZ asks visitor visa applicants to supply about their translator. It has no rush tier, because a translator reviews and signs each one personally. Both are in the facts box on this page.

If you married and changed your name after graduating, your degree and your passport now disagree about who you are. For an NZQA International Qualification Assessment, a marriage certificate, deed poll or affidavit bridges the gap, and it needs an English translation like every other non-English document NZQA receives. INZ also expects names to line up across an application, so the same certificate may end up doing two jobs.

We keep names spelled consistently across every document in an order. Ordering the marriage certificate together with your diploma and transcript translation is the easiest way to make sure they match.

Most marriage certificates are one or two pages, though registry extracts with a back page of stamps and annotations can run longer. Each document includes 2 free revisions, and the translation arrives as a PDF ready to upload with your INZ application.

Upload a photo or scan on the quote form to see the exact total before you pay.