NZ Translations
Est. 2013 · 160+ Languages
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Pay for what is needed · From $49

Selective Translation
in New Zealand.

Been quoted a price that made you wince? For a lot of documents you do not have to translate every page. A selective translation covers only the information the office actually needs, which is why it costs less. We have been doing this from Auckland since 2013, and we will tell you honestly whether your document qualifies — before you pay us anything. This page explains how selective translation NZ wide works, and when it does not. For prices on a specific certificate, see that document’s own page.

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Do You Have to Translate
Every Page of a Document?

For most personal certificates, no. A selective translation, sometimes called a partial translation, covers only the information the receiving office needs, and that is all they read anyway. For some other documents the answer is yes, and we will say so rather than let you find out later.

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Why the bill gets so big

People tell us certified translation is too expensive, and the reason is the pricing model. Cost per page is the normal way to charge, and a page is counted as roughly 250 words. So a twelve page record costs about twelve times a one page one, even when only three relevant lines matter to anybody. That is why a long document feels so expensive for what it is.

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What we do instead

We read the entire document, then translate the parts the office asked for and present them as one certified page. You get less paper and a smaller bill, and the reader gets exactly what they were looking for without hunting for it.

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Why nobody told you this

Most New Zealand translation firms do selective work quietly and never mention it. It is not a secret, it just sells less. We would rather explain it and let you choose, because you were going to find out one day anyway.

This is not an extra you buy from us. It is already how we prepare the standard certificates priced across this site. If you have ordered a birth certificate or a driver licence from us, you have already had one. Where it makes the biggest difference is a file with several documents in it — our citizenship document translation page shows how that adds up.

The Trust Question

Is a Selective Translation
Actually Accepted in New Zealand?

Yes, for the document types it applies to. The Department of Internal Affairs runs its own translation service on exactly this basis, and says the Citizenship Office and Immigration New Zealand accept its selective translations of personal certificates. This is the normal standard here, not a shortcut somebody invented.

Where the idea comes from

The official description is plain enough: only the information known to be required gets translated. That wording belongs to the government service, not to us, and it tells you how settled the practice is.

Once you have seen a few dozen certificates from the same country, you know which lines an official reads and which ones are printed on every single copy. That knowledge is the whole service.

What you actually receive

A certified extract on our letterhead, carrying the translator’s name and stamp and a signed Certificate of Accuracy. It is not a note or a summary. A certified extract is a formal document, prepared to the same standard as a full translation, with a narrower scope.

The certificate also states plainly that it is a selective translation. Nothing is disguised, and the reader can see at once what they are holding. This is why a birth certificate translation is priced as one job rather than by the page.

Why people worry about it

People ask us whether DIA accepts it, whether INZ accepts it, and whether it counts as valid at all. The worry starts because it arrives shorter than expected and looks thin next to the original. We hear this most from people who have already paid somebody else and are now second-guessing it. If that is you, send it over and we will tell you whether it holds up. No charge for looking.

Nothing Hidden

What Gets Left Out
of a Selective Translation?

The boilerplate that is identical on every copy of that certificate. Printed headings, the legal paragraph underneath, empty boxes nobody filled in. Skipping it saves you money without costing you anything. What stays is everything that is about you.

Always translated Usually left out
Your full name, as the document spells itPrinted column headings
Dates of birth, marriage or deathThe legal paragraph quoting the Act
Places — town, city, countryBoxes left blank on your copy
Parents’ names, where they are listedInstructions to the registrar
Registration number and issue dateDecorative borders and watermark text
The issuing office, stamps and endorsementsRepeated text that appears on every copy

Nothing about you is ever left out. If a line is unusual, or looks like it might matter, it goes in.

One rule we never break. Stamps, marginal notes and handwritten endorsements go in, every time. Those are the marks that carry the real meaning on an old certificate, and they are also the first thing an experienced official looks for. A birth certificate with the registrar’s note missing is worse than no translation at all.

Where The Line Sits

Which Documents Can Be Translated
Selectively, and Which Cannot?

Personal certificates generally can. Anything that will be read as evidence needs a full translation instead. The dividing line is whether the office wants your details or wants the document itself in front of them.

The seven that usually qualify

Birth, marriage, divorce, death and name change certificates, police clearances, and driver licences. These are listed on the government’s own guidance as documents where only the needed information is translated. Other identification documents can qualify too, so it is worth asking about yours rather than assuming.

A licence is the clearest example. Nobody needs the printed conditions on the back of the card translated — they need your name, your classes and your dates, which is exactly what a driver licence translation gives them.

Where we will not suggest it

Qualifications are the firmest no, and they always take a full translation. NZQA asks for an English translation of each document by a recognised official translation service, and wants the whole thing scanned with nothing cut off or missing. That is not a place to trim, and we do not offer to.

Court files are the other one, and here it is written into the District Court Rules and the High Court Rules. A document in another language has to be filed with an interpreter’s sworn statement attaching the full translation. A partial translation does not satisfy that rule, and stamps, marginal notes and handwritten additions all have to be there.

The one that catches people out

Police certificates sit awkwardly. They appear on the government list of selective document types, yet immigration guidance asks for full certified translations of police certificates, including ones that record nothing at all. When two official sources point different ways, we take the careful route and do a full translation.

If two offices want the same certificate, ask both before you order. One may accept a partial translation while the other insists on every word. Getting that answer first means paying once instead of twice, and it takes one email to find out.

The Big Ones

Why Do Bank Statements and Long Records
Cost So Much to Translate?

Because page count drives the price, and these documents are mostly repetition. Six months of statements is the same header and the same column titles over and over, with your actual figures buried inside. You are paying to translate the wallpaper.

Bank statements

The office wants to see the account holder, the bank, the period and the balances. It does not want forty pages of transaction labels in another language. We translate the parts that answer the question and set them out clearly.

Household and identity booklets

Some countries issue family or household registers as a booklet — the Chinese Hukou is the one we see most — and several pages are pre-printed forms. The pages that name people and record relationships are the relevant ones, and those are the ones we work on.

Property deeds and long records

Title deeds, employment records and long medical files carry the same pattern — a little relevant information wrapped in repetitive standard text. Study records are the exception here: those need a full translation, so see academic transcript translation for how they are priced.

Ask the office one question before you order. Ask them what they need to see in the document, not whether they need a translation. The answer is usually narrower than you expect, and it tells us exactly what to prepare.

If they ask for everything, we translate everything. But most requests for a long record are really requests for four or five facts that happen to live inside it.

The Honest Risk

What Happens If the Authority Asks
for the Full Translation Later?

We do the full version and you pay only the difference, never twice. This can happen — an officer is allowed to ask for a complete translation where a selective one was supplied. It is uncommon, but anyone telling you it never happens has not read the rules.

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You pay the gap, not the job

The work already done still counts. We upgrade the same document and charge the difference between the two prices, so you are never billed twice for the same certificate. That is a promise, not a goodwill gesture.

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We turn it around quickly

Because the document is already read, understood and typed up, an upgrade is far faster than starting from scratch. Send us what the officer wrote and we usually have the full version back the same day.

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When we choose full from the start

If your document is going somewhere that has a habit of asking, we say so before you order. Paying a little more once beats paying less twice, and losing weeks in between. We would rather lose the cheaper sale than your deadline.

Where this comes up most. Overseas police records, because the rules around them are stricter than the rest of a personal file — our police certificate translation page explains what those need. Everything else in a normal document set rarely gets queried at all.

Clear Pricing

How Much Does a Selective Translation
Cost in New Zealand?

From $49 for a standard certificate. What moves the price is your document’s word count and how much of it the office actually needs — not which of these three labels we put on the job.

Standard Certificate
From $49
per document · GST inclusive
📄 Birth, marriage, divorce, death, name change, driver licence
  • ✓Every detail about you, nothing skipped
  • ✓Stamps and handwritten notes included
  • ✓Signed Certificate of Accuracy
  • ✓Upgrade to full for the difference only
Most Chosen
Multi-Page Documents
From $69
per document · GST inclusive
📜 Bank statements, deeds, booklets and long records
  • ✓We read every page before choosing
  • ✓Far cheaper than a per page quote
  • ✓Laid out so the reader finds it fast
  • ✓Scope agreed with you in writing first
Full Translation
From $89
per document · GST inclusive
📕 When the office wants every word
  • ✓Word for word, start to finish
  • ✓For qualifications, courts and police records
  • ✓Layout kept close to the original
  • ✓We recommend this when it is the safer call

The prices above are starting prices. What a selective translation costs depends on how long your document is and how much of it the office actually needs. Send us the document and we will tell you which approach applies and what it will cost — including if the honest answer is that you need the full version after all. Nothing is charged until you approve the written quotation.

Express delivery adds $20 and urgent delivery adds $50.

Worth comparing

The Department of Internal Affairs charges $95 for a selective translation of a standard certificate. Ours start at $49 for the same kind of document. Send us your list and we will price the whole thing properly.

Prices last reviewed: 18 September 2026. All prices include GST.

Getting Started

How Do You Know Which One
Your Document Needs?

You do not have to work it out. Send us a photo and tell us which office it is going to, and we will tell you. That answer is free and you are not committed to ordering anything.

1

Send a photo of every page

Even the ones you think are blank. We need to see the whole document before we can tell you which parts of it matter.

2

Tell us where it is going

Name the office or the application. That one word changes the answer more than the document itself does, so please do not skip it.

3

We tell you which applies

Selective or full, with the reason in plain words, plus a written quotation. Free, inside thirty minutes, seven days a week.

4

You decide, then we start

On a multi-page job we agree the scope with you in writing first, so there is no argument later about what was covered.

Send the whole file, not one page at a time. Looking at four documents together, we can see where the savings are and spot the ones that have to be done in full. A visa or residence application is where this matters most, because those files carry a mix of both — our immigration document translation page shows how a full set is put together.

Still Wondering

What Else Do People Ask
About Partial Translation?

Can I tell you which parts I want translated?

▾
Yes, and it helps when the office has given you a list. What we will not do is leave out something we can see matters, even if you did not ask for it — that would be our name on a translation we knew was thin. If we disagree with your scope we will say so before starting, not after.

Someone else did mine and it looks too short. Is it wrong?

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Probably not wrong, just selective. Send it to us with the name of the office and we will tell you straight whether it covers what that office asks for. If it does, use it and keep your money. We look at these most weeks and we are happy to say when somebody else has done a good job.

Does the same approach work translating out of English?

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Sometimes, but be careful. Overseas offices set their own rules and some want every word, in a format we would not guess at. Tell us the destination country and we will check before quoting. Where we are not sure, we recommend the full version, because fixing a rejected document from another country takes far longer than doing it properly here.

How long does a selective translation take?

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A single certificate is quick, since the format is familiar and there is less to type. A long record takes about as long to read as a full translation would, because we still have to go through every page to find what matters — the saving is in the typing, not the reading. Your written quotation always carries a date.

Will the reader know something was left out?

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Yes, and that is the point. The certificate states clearly that it is a selective translation, so nobody is under any illusion about what they are reading. Officials see these constantly and know exactly what the format is. Hiding it would be the only thing that could cause a problem.

My document is handwritten and faded. Does that change things?

▾
It changes the reading, not the approach. Old handwritten certificates take longer to work through and the price reflects that, but the same parts still matter. Where a word genuinely cannot be made out we mark it as unclear rather than guess, because a guess on an official document is the worst of both worlds.
Priced Per Document

Which Document Are You
Actually Trying to Price?

Each of these has its own page with the full price and what is included.

👶
Birth Certificate
From $49 · Usually selective
 💍
Marriage Certificate
From $49 · Usually selective
 ⚖
Legal Documents
From $75 · Always in full
 💼
Business Documents
Per word · Contracts in full

Send the Document.
We Will Tell You How Much of It Needs Doing.

A photo and the name of the office is all it takes. A real person here in Auckland reads it, works out whether a selective translation will do or whether you need every word, and sends you a written quotation either way. Free, inside 30 minutes, with no obligation. We have been doing this since 2013, and if something on our side goes wrong we put it right at our cost.

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Auckland-based since 2013 · Open 7 days · Upgrade to full for the difference only · From $49