About Haf Roberts

Cyf, Cymraeg, and certification

Haf Roberts Cyf is a company registered in England and Wales — Wales is part of the England and Wales jurisdiction — carrying on translation and interpretation activities (SIC 74300). Its registered office is Gwyddfor, Penisarwaen, Gwynedd, Wales, LL55 3PG. Cyf is short for Cyfyngedig, the Welsh for Limited, and is the Welsh-language form of the company suffix.

Certification, properly explained. Several countries maintain registers of sworn or officially appointed translators. The United Kingdom does not. There is no statutory UK register of sworn, official or government-approved translators, and no UK body confers that status. In UK practice a “certified translation” is a translation accompanied by a signed and dated statement that it is a true and accurate translation of the document supplied, together with the translator’s or company’s name and contact details. That is all it is. Some bodies additionally require that statement to be sworn as an affidavit or statutory declaration before a solicitor or notary public, and some require the underlying document to be legalised with an apostille by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Those are separate steps, carried out by other people. We never describe our work as sworn, official, certified-by-government or legally recognised, because none of those descriptions would be true.

What we do not claim. This website claims no registration with the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, no membership of the Chartered Institute of Linguists or the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, no Diploma in Public Service Interpreting or other qualification, no approval under any Ministry of Justice or police language services framework, no ISO 17100 or other certification, no security clearance, no insurance and no accreditation of any kind. Court, police and public-service interpreting carry their own registration requirements, and we do not claim to meet them.

Welsh. Mae croeso i chi gysylltu â ni yn Gymraeg. You are welcome to contact us in Welsh, and correspondence and documents can be handled in Welsh throughout. The Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 and the Welsh language standards made under it place duties on public bodies rather than on private companies; working in Welsh here is a choice rather than a duty, and it is one we are glad to make.

Confidentiality. Documents sent for translation routinely contain personal data, and often special category data such as health or legal information. They are handled confidentially, used only for the translation requested, and not disclosed to anyone outside the work without instruction. Where we process personal data on a client’s behalf, the client remains the data controller and a written agreement governs the processing. We do not give legal, immigration, medical or financial advice; translating a document is not advising on it, and immigration advice in particular is a regulated activity we do not carry on.