French, and the oath behind it
Burundi runs its official business in French, so a British record has to arrive with a French version attached. A certified translation into French in Birmingham meets the language half of that. The second half is the person: Burundi expects the French to be signed by a translator who holds sworn status.
Sworn status means the translator swore an oath in front of a court before ever touching your file. From then on their signature is a legal act, not a courtesy. That is why the phrase traducteur assermenté keeps appearing on French-language paperwork — it names the standing, not the skill.
What lands on the finished page
The French sheet mirrors the layout of the source. Where the English shows a raised seal, the French says so in the same spot. Handwriting that cannot be made out is marked as unreadable rather than filled in, because a guess on a name or a date is the fault that gets a file sent back.
Beneath the text sits the sworn translator's statement and signature. It names them, gives the date and states that the French carries the same meaning as the English. That block is what a Burundian clerk reads first, before they read a single line of the record itself.
The rate and the wait
Work is priced at roughly £25 a page. A page is one side, so a double-sided form counts as two and a four-page transcript as four. Total your own sheets and you will land close to the quote. The oath, the layout work and the signed statement are all inside that figure.
Turnaround is 2–4 business days as standard. Where a date is already fixed, express runs 24–48 hours. Sworn work sits at the longer end of the ordinary range because the translator reviews the whole file under their own oath before signing, and that reading cannot be hurried.
Getting the source right first
The French can only be as good as the sheet behind it, so start with a clean, current copy. A faded photocopy of a photocopy loses the seal edges, and a seal that cannot be described is a hole in the finished set. Order an official French translation in Birmingham from a crisp scan and the whole chain holds.
A certified translation for Burundi is usually part of a wider bundle — a birth entry, a marriage entry, sometimes a police check. Send them together rather than one by one. Quoting and scheduling a single batch is faster, and the pages come back in one consistent style instead of three.