Certified, notarized or apostilled? A stress-free guide to translated documents in Romania

You need a document translated, and suddenly everyone around you seems to be speaking a different kind of foreign language: authorized, notarized, apostilled. You hear the words tossed around at a counter, at a notary’s office, or in an email from an institution back home, and it starts to feel like you need to pass a bureaucracy exam just to understand what’s being asked of you. The good news: the distinction is much simpler than it looks, and the level you need depends mostly on who receives the document: a private party, a Romanian public authority, or an institution abroad.

The basic level: the certified translation

A certified translation is, essentially, a translation stamped and signed by a translator authorized by Romania’s Ministry of Justice. The translator holds an authorization in their own name, granted by the Ministry of Justice under Law 178/1997 to people attested by the Ministry of Culture as legal translators for that language pair, and takes responsibility for the accuracy of the text through that stamp. For many everyday things in Romania, such as a contract, a certificate for a local job application or papers for a private company, a certified translation is all that’s asked of you, but most public authorities, including Civil Status, the citizenship authority ANC and CNRED, want the next level up: a notarised translation.

Think of someone submitting their diploma to an employer in Cluj, or a student who needs their transcript in English for a university exchange: in both cases, the authorized translator’s stamp is usually enough. No notary, no extra stamp required — just a translator putting their name and authorization behind the text. You can check that a translator really is authorised in the Ministry of Justice’s public list of authorised interpreters and translators, which shows each person’s authorisation number and languages.

One step further: notarization

Things get a little more complicated when a document is headed to a stricter institution or, very often, to another country. That’s where notarization comes in: on top of the authorized translator’s stamp, a notary public confirms the translator’s identity and the authenticity of their signature. It’s essentially an extra layer of trust, and in Romania it is the standard for foreign-language documents filed with public authorities such as civil status offices, the citizenship authority (ANC) and CNRED, as well as for some banks and foreign institutions.

A typical example: a foreign citizen marrying in Romania, whose birth certificate, and divorce papers if any, must be translated into Romanian with the translation notarized, because that is the form Romanian civil status offices accept. Notarization doesn’t change the content of the translation — it just adds a stamp of institutional trust.

The top floor: the Hague Apostille

The apostille is a different thing altogether from translation or notarization: it’s a separate certificate, attached either to the original document or to the notarized translation, that confirms the signature, the signer’s capacity and the seal on the document (not its content) for use in the other states party to the 1961 Hague Convention, and in Romania it is issued by the prefectures for administrative documents, the chambers of notaries for notarial acts and the tribunals for court documents. It’s essentially the “passport” that spares a Romanian document consular legalisation in another member country, though the receiving authority may still ask for a translation and decides for itself what the document proves.

Take the case of someone hired to work in Italy who needs their degree recognized. The path can look something like this: authentication (vizare) of the Romanian diploma by CNRED, requested through the ROePAS platform or the issuing university, then the Hague apostille from the prefecture, then a translation into Italian, with the recognition of the degree itself decided on the Italian side. Three different steps, each with its own role — which is exactly where the maze feeling comes from. Inside the EU there is a shortcut: under Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, public documents such as birth, marriage or criminal record certificates issued in one member state need no apostille in another, and an EU multilingual standard form can stand in for the translation.

How to actually tell what you need

The short rule: if the document stays in Romania with a private party, a certified translation is usually enough, but if it goes to a Romanian public authority, expect a notarised translation and ask whether they want the original or a copy. If it’s headed to a more formal institution or to another country, ask in advance exactly what form is required: notarization, apostille, or both. For notarization and apostilles, you generally need the original document, not just a copy. Watch the vocabulary too: Romanian institutions’ English pages sometimes say “certified translation” where the Romanian text requires a traducere legalizată (a notarised one); CNRED, for example, asks for a notarised translation of study documents not issued in Romanian, English, French, Spanish or Italian.

Never assume one form is “universally valid”: requirements differ from one institution to another and from one country to another, and while an apostille itself does not expire, many institutions only accept recently issued documents, especially something like a criminal record certificate. The safest move is to ask the institution requesting the document directly which combination it wants, before you start the process — so you don’t end up translating the same document twice.

If you need a certified translation in Cluj, the TransMondo team (established 1998) offers free estimates and can walk you through exactly these steps.

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