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Issues Associated with Translation and Legalization of Documents in Thailand

Transcript of the above video:

In this video, we're going to discuss the legalization of both Thai and foreign documents with respect to Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in Thailand. What we're talking about here?

With respect to expats, living here in Thailand even dealing with rather routine and mundane matters such as Thai driver's licenses and things like these, getting married in Thailand, marriage registration which for Thais can rather be simple matters going to the Civil Registrar's Office, each individual bringing their Thai partner and just registering up the marriage. With respect to foreigners as with virtually everything in Thailand, more documentation is going to be required for something such as that.

This is why we are discussing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their legalization document for the Legalization Department for both foreign documents as well as Thai documents being used in a foreign context. Again, what are we talking about? For example, let's say there's a court case occurring in the United States and there's property or there's a matter that pertains to Thailand, an individual involved in the case is actually in Thailand and some sort of document needs to be submitted to the U.S. courts.

A good example of the use of legalization would be a Thai document is going to be issued all the time, that needs to be translated and that translation needs to be legalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to confirm the authenticity of the underlying translation and basically, the authenticity of the underlying document to then be used in a foreign proceeding, say the United States court system. That is an example of going one way.

An example of coming back the other way is again, expats here in Thailand often find themselves in rather mundane routine situations needing Ministry of Foreign Affairs legalization of foreign documents most notably for driver's license application or renewal here in Thailand. If one wants to get a Thai driver's license, then a component of that is going through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With certain affidavits issued by say, the American embassy or the British embassy, one needs to go ahead get those documents translated as well as legalized in order to, again prove up the authenticity of the underlying document as well as the translation that has been done.

So legalization, although it's rather mundane, we deal with it rather frequently. It seems we constantly have somebody out at the legalization department at Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although it's rather mundane, it's an integral part of the overall process of dealing with certain legal matters however mundane they may be in Thailand.