Translation and Legalization

Sofia Offices doesn't sell translation by the page. We handle legalization. The job is to make an official Bulgarian document valid before a foreign institution, or a foreign document valid before a Bulgarian one. Bulgaria splits that work across four apostille authorities, a notary, and sometimes an embassy. The order matters, and getting it wrong means the document comes back unused.

Quick answer: This service covers official and public documents that a receiving institution wants apostilled or consular-legalized. Civil status certificates, diplomas and academic transcripts, criminal record certificates. Company documents, powers of attorney, notarial deeds and court judgments. Accounting or tax documents going to a foreign administration. We run the whole chain, not just the translation. That means checking what the receiving institution requires, then obtaining the document or duplicate in the right form. After that comes the apostille from whichever authority is competent, the official translation, and certification of the translator's signature. Consular legalization follows when the destination sits outside the 1961 Hague Convention. We don't take on marketing copy, websites, business correspondence, technical manuals or free translation.

Jump to: How we checked this · Who this is for · Documents we handle · The procedure step by step · Foreign documents for use in Bulgaria · Apostille vs consular legalization vs notary · When no apostille is needed · What we don't do · FAQ

How we checked this page

Every procedural statement below was checked against a primary source on 21 September 2026, not against other agencies' pages. The steps come from the Rules on Legalizations, Certifications and Translations of Documents and Other Papers, first published in State Gazette issue 73 of 1958. We worked from the consolidated text, which matters more than it sounds. A copy stopping at the 2018 amendment misses three later changes. Issue 7 of 2019 and issue 39 of 2020 both amended the text. The Supreme Administrative Court annulled part of it in issue 41 of 2019, and the 2020 change added the chapter that now governs apostilles.

The split of apostille work between the four authorities comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs consular pages. We cross-checked it against the government's register of administrative services. The entry for the ministry's apostille service was last updated on 29 October 2025. Country status comes from the HCCH status table for the 1961 Convention, which listed 130 contracting parties on the day we checked. Treaty exemptions come from the ministry's own compiled list of treaty texts, read article by article. The wording differs from one treaty to the next, and so does the exemption.

Two limits are worth stating up front. We quote no prices and no turnaround times here, since both depend on which authorities end up in the chain. And no page can promise that a foreign institution will accept a document. That decision belongs to the institution. It's why we check its requirements before anything gets stamped.

Who this is for

Start with the corporate cases. A Bulgarian subsidiary proving its legal existence to a foreign bank, registry or tax authority. A foreign parent company whose board resolution has to be recognized here. An exporter opening a branch in a Gulf state. A law firm that needs a Bulgarian court judgment accepted abroad.

The second group runs the other way, and it's larger than people expect. Foreign nationals and foreign-owned companies arrive with documents that Bulgarian institutions won't look at until they're certified and translated properly. A foreign diploma for a work permit or Blue Card application. A criminal record certificate for a residence procedure. A parent company's founding act for a subsidiary registration. A power of attorney signed abroad so somebody can file here on your behalf.

Private individuals fit the same frame, as long as the document is an official one. Birth and marriage certificates, school and university documents, pension papers, inheritance files. The test isn't who you are. It's whether an institution somewhere demands an apostille or a consular stamp on a public document.

Documents we handle, and what they're usually for

The service is limited to official and public documents. That means anything issued or certified by a state body, a court, a notary or a public register. Here's what actually passes through, with the procedures each one feeds:

• Civil status certificates. Birth, marriage, death, family status. Used for residence applications, foreign marriages, inheritance files, pension and social security claims, and school enrolment abroad.
• Diplomas and academic transcripts. Secondary school diplomas, university degrees, grade transcripts, professional qualification certificates. Used for recognition of education, professional licensing and employer verification.
• Criminal record certificates. Required by most residence, work permit, licensing and company management procedures. The Bulgarian certificate is valid for six months from issue, so the order of steps matters when the file also needs a slow apostille.
• Certificates of good standing, founding acts. Commercial Register certificates, articles of association, shareholder and management details. Used to open foreign bank accounts, register branches and subsidiaries, sign cross-border contracts and enter public tenders.
• Powers of attorney and declarations. Signed before a notary, then certified so someone can act for you in another country. Powers of attorney travel in both directions, which is why they appear twice on this page.
• Notarial deeds. Property transfers, mortgages, consents, and certified copies executed by a Bulgarian notary.
• Court judgments and court certificates. Divorce judgments, judgments to be enforced abroad, certificates of pending or closed proceedings.
• Accounting and financial documents. Annual financial statements, audit reports and turnover certificates, where a foreign administration, bank or tender committee asks for them. Our accountancy team produces the underlying statements when the client is ours.
• Tax and banking documents. Tax registration and tax residency certificates, certificates of no outstanding public liabilities, and bank references for account opening, treaty relief or foreign licensing.

One category sits outside this list by law. The 1961 Convention doesn't cover administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations. So an invoice, a price list or a certificate of origin can't carry an apostille. Those are certified by the chamber of commerce that issues them, then consular-legalized if the destination country asks. Ask us before you assume your export file belongs with the apostilled documents.

The procedure, step by step

This is the outbound chain: a Bulgarian document that has to work in front of a foreign institution. Not every document needs every step. Knowing which steps to skip is most of the value.

1. Check the receiving institution's rules. Requirements vary by country, by institution and sometimes by desk. Does the apostille go on the original or on a notarized copy? Does the institution want a bilingual translation, or one made under its own country's law? Does the apostille itself need translating? Is there a validity window, so a certificate older than three or six months gets rejected? We ask these questions first, because the answers change every step after them.

2. Obtain the document in usable form. Civil status documents usually need a fresh duplicate or extract issued for use abroad, not the copy in your drawer. A document going to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to carry the rectangular stamp for abroad. The issuing Bulgarian authority applies it, and without it the counter won't accept the file. (It's as literal as it sounds: a stamp whose only job is to say the document is leaving the country.) Education documents normally need an endorsement from the regional education directorate or the issuing institution first. Where a document is missing, damaged or was never collected, obtaining it is part of the job.

3. Apostille from the competent authority. Bulgaria has four, and they don't overlap:

• Ministry of Justice, for documents from a body or official tied to the justice system. That is wider than courts. It covers prosecutors, court clerks and process servers, as well as notarial acts. Official certifications count too: a register entry, or a certified date or signature on a private document. Powers of attorney, judgments and criminal record certificates land here.
• NACID, the National Centre for Information and Documentation, for education documents. Schools, vocational institutions, universities, scientific organizations and the education ministry itself all fall here. Where the document already sits in that ministry's public registers, NACID issues the apostille as an electronic service.
• Regional administrations, for documents issued by mayors and municipal administrations. Since 1 January 2019, apostilles on Bulgarian municipal documents come from the regional administration and not from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Parliament empowered them in State Gazette issue 44 of 2018, and the regulation itself caught up in issue 7 of 2019. Guides written earlier still send people to the wrong building.
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Consular Relations Directorate, for every other administrative document, provided the issuing authority certified it first. That last condition is where files stall.

4. Official translation. Bulgaria has no statutory register of sworn translators, which surprises almost everyone. The Supreme Administrative Court struck the register down on 18 December 2018, and the repeal took effect on 21 May 2019. The reason was simple. A licensing regime for translation work had been created without a statute behind it.

What survives is narrower. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps its own arrangement for the translations it certifies. It runs on a declaration form, currently the one attached to its order of 5 June 2023. The translator signs that declaration in front of a notary, and it carries liability under Article 290(2) of the Criminal Code. That text punishes a knowingly false translation before an authority. Court interpreters are a separate system altogether, appointed by each court under the Judicial System Act, so one phrase ends up covering two regimes. And one procedural rule catches people out. A translation containing corrections, deletions, insertions or erasures is invalid, so a hand-fixed typo means the page gets redone.

5. Certification of the translator's signature. For a Bulgarian document going abroad, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs certifies that signature, where the destination country requires or accepts it. Some countries don't. Paying for a certification nobody asked for is a common waste.

6. Consular legalization for non-Convention countries. For a country that is neither a Convention party nor covered by a bilateral treaty, the apostille route doesn't exist. The ministry legalizes the document, and then the destination country's embassy or consulate in Sofia certifies it. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt all sit in this lane. None of them is a Convention party, and none has a treaty with Bulgaria. Thailand is about to leave that lane. It deposited its instrument of accession on 30 June 2026, and the Convention enters into force for Thailand on 28 February 2027. Documents sent to Bangkok before that date still go the consular route.

Foreign documents for use in Bulgaria

Many of the enquiries we get run this way, and the chain looks different. The foreign side goes first, in the country that issued the document. Which version applies depends on that country:

• Hague Convention country. The competent authority there places the apostille. Once it carries one, the document needs no further Bulgarian legalization or certification.
• Bilateral treaty country. The document needs only the signatures and seals the treaty specifies. Translation and certification of the translation follow.
• Neither of the above. Full legalization. The foreign ministry of the issuing country certifies the document, and a Bulgarian diplomatic or consular mission legalizes it. Our ministry can legalize a foreign document here only if that country's embassy in Bulgaria certified it first.

Then comes the Bulgarian part. The document is translated into Bulgarian, and the translation has to be certified. Since 1 March 2018, a Bulgarian notary certifies the translator's signature on foreign documents, not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The amendment behind that appeared in State Gazette issue 95 of 28 November 2017. Instructions published before 2018 still send you to the wrong counter. The regulation still tells the translator to show the notary a confirmation issued under Article 18(2). That is one of the paragraphs the court struck down in 2019, and nobody has tidied the text since.

Two traps show up repeatedly. First, a stamp certifying that a copy matches the original is not a certification that the document is authentic. NACID rejects files that confuse the two. Second, a translation between two foreign languages can't be made directly under Bulgarian rules. It goes through Bulgarian, which means two translations and two fees.

This chain sits behind most first steps a foreign investor takes here. Opening a Bulgarian bank account is one. Registering a subsidiary whose parent company documents were issued abroad is another.

Apostille, consular legalization, notarial certification: which is which

These three get mistaken for each other more than anything else in the procedure. They do different jobs.

An apostille is a single certificate, placed by an authority of the country that issued the document. It works only between parties to the 1961 Hague Convention. It certifies the authenticity of the signature, the capacity of the person who signed, and the seal or stamp. It says nothing about whether the content is true, or whether the document suits your purpose. It applies to public documents only. Two categories are excluded outright: documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents, and administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations.

Consular legalization is the older chain, used when the Convention doesn't apply. Each link certifies the one before it, ending with the embassy of the destination country. It's slower by design, because it involves two administrations and a diplomatic mission.

Notarial certification of the translator's signature is neither of those. A notary confirms whose hand signed the translation. That's all. It doesn't certify the underlying document, doesn't replace an apostille, and doesn't make an unapostilled foreign document usable. In Bulgaria it's the mandatory step for foreign documents translated here for local use. For documents leaving Bulgaria, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs takes that role instead, when the destination country wants it.

Can one document carry all three? Yes, and plenty do. A foreign power of attorney arrives with an apostille from its home country. It gets translated here, and the translator's signature is notarized. Three certifications, three different jobs, none of them interchangeable.

When no apostille is needed at all

Here's the part that saves clients the most money, and it's missing from most agency pages.

Inside the EU, Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 has removed the apostille requirement for a defined group of public documents. It has applied since 16 February 2019. It covers birth, a person being alive, death, name, marriage and capacity to marry, divorce and annulment. It also covers registered partnership, parenthood, adoption, domicile and residence, and nationality. Absence of a criminal record is on the list, as is the right to vote in local and European elections. You can ask the issuing authority for a multilingual standard form, which spares you a translation in most cases. For the documents on that list, a certified translation made in any member state has to be accepted in all of them. The list is closed, though. Company documents, diplomas, notarial deeds and court judgments aren't on it, so those still need an apostille inside the EU.

Bulgaria also has bilateral legal assistance treaties that exempt documents from legalization entirely. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs compilation of those treaty texts lists 36 states, and carries a note that it was current in January 2017:

• EU and Balkans: Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania.
• Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia.
• Asia, Middle East, Africa, Americas: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Algeria.

Several of those entries rest on treaties with states that no longer exist. The Balkan exemptions all trace back to the 1956 treaty with Yugoslavia, and the Czech and Slovak ones to the 1976 treaty with Czechoslovakia. Succession keeps them alive, which is why a 70-year-old treaty still decides whether your document needs a stamp in Zagreb.

Read the treaty, though, not the list. An exemption is only as wide as the article that grants it. The 1989 treaty with France exempts official documents generally when presented in the other country. The 1993 treaty with China exempts documents and translations issued or certified by courts or other competent authorities. The 1990 treaty with Italy is narrower. It exempts documents exchanged in connection with legal assistance, which is not the same as every certificate you might file in Milan.

Vietnam shows how easily this gets misread. The Apostille Convention entered into force for Vietnam on 11 September 2026, which reads like news for anyone sending documents there. For Bulgarian documents it changes nothing. The 1986 bilateral treaty has exempted them since it took effect in July 1987.

One more warning comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself. It's the reason we ask where a document is going before we translate anything. Bulgarian missions report that translations certified in Bulgaria are sometimes refused abroad, with the institution demanding a translation made under local law. Italy, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Cyprus and Belgium are the countries the ministry names. If that's your destination, the translation may have to happen there. We'd rather tell you that than sell you a Bulgarian one that gets bounced.

What we don't do

This is a legalization service, so the boundaries are worth stating plainly.

• No general or marketing translation. Websites, brochures, advertising copy, product descriptions, business correspondence, technical manuals, software localization and subtitling sit outside our scope.
• No interpreting. We don't supply interpreters for meetings, conferences or events.
• No stand-alone free translation. If no institution is requiring an apostille or consular stamp, a general translation agency is the cheaper answer, and we'll say so.
• No guarantee of acceptance. A foreign institution decides whether to accept a document. We check its published requirements in advance and follow them exactly. Anyone promising acceptance is promising something they don't control.
• No fixed turnaround up front. Four authorities, a notary and sometimes an embassy each have their own queue. We map the realistic path once we've seen the document, and we don't advertise 24-hour legalization.

Questions clients ask before sending us a document

Which authority puts the apostille on a Bulgarian document?

It depends entirely on who issued the document. Anything from the justice system goes to the Ministry of Justice, notarial acts included, and education documents go to NACID. Municipal documents go to the regional administration, and everything else from central executive bodies to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sending a document to the wrong one doesn't get you a rejection letter so much as a lost trip. Nothing else on this page is as easy to get wrong.

Do Bulgarian documents need an apostille for use in Germany or Italy?

For civil status documents, usually not. Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 removed the apostille requirement for birth, marriage, residence and criminal record documents between EU states in February 2019. Company documents, diplomas and court judgments aren't covered, so those still need one. Both countries also appear on the ministry's list where a Bulgarian-certified translation may be refused. Check the receiving institution's translation rules before paying for one here.

Is a notarized translation the same as a legalized document?

No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the field. A notary certifies that a named translator signed the translation. Nothing more. If the underlying document needed an apostille or consular legalization, it still needs it. The notarized translation substitutes for neither.

Can you apostille a document that was issued outside Bulgaria?

No. Every country apostilles only its own public documents. A German birth certificate gets its apostille in Germany, and a Turkish diploma gets one in Turkey. What we do on this side is the Bulgarian half: the official translation and the notarial certification of the translator's signature. We also check that what arrived is usable here before you spend anything on it.

Does a document going to China or Russia need an apostille?

Not under the bilateral treaties. China has been exempt under the 1993 legal assistance treaty, and Russia under the 1975 treaty signed with the USSR. Documents covered by those articles need a translation and certification of the translation, not an apostille. Send us the document and the destination institution, because the treaty article decides the answer, not the country name.

How long is a Bulgarian criminal record certificate valid?

Six months from the date of issue. That clock runs while the apostille, translation and certification are being done. We sequence the file so the receiving institution still gets a usable window. Ordering the certificate too early is a real way to pay for the whole chain twice.

Can you handle this if I'm not in Bulgaria?

Yes, and that's the usual arrangement for foreign clients. Sign a power of attorney in front of a notary where you live, have it apostilled there, and send it over. Note that the power of attorney is itself a foreign document, so it goes through the inbound chain above before we can use it. Then we obtain the Bulgarian documents, take them to the right apostille authority, arrange the translation and certification, and return the finished file.

Can you translate our company website or brochure?

That's not what this department does. We work on official documents heading into or out of an institutional procedure. For commercial content, a general translation agency will serve you better and charge you less.

Check your case before you start

Legalization goes wrong in the first five minutes, not the last. The wrong apostille authority. A certificate issued without the stamp for abroad. A translation certified in the wrong country, or a criminal record certificate ordered three months too early. Each of those sends the file back to the start, and none of them is visible until an institution refuses the document.

So start with the destination. Tell us what the document is, which country and institution it's going to, and what that institution asked for in writing. We'll tell you which steps your document needs and which it can skip. We'll also tell you when the translation has to be made abroad rather than here. Our legal team handles the notarial and court side. That includes powers of attorney drafted so someone can act for you here while you stay where you are.

Worth a look while you're planning: company formation in Bulgaria, where foreign parent company documents need legalizing before the register accepts them. Our accountancy and tax pages cover the financial statements foreign administrations ask to see. When you're ready, send us the details of your case and we'll map the chain for it.