French, and the oath behind it
Guinea handles official papers in French. A birth entry, a diploma or a police check written in English is a foreign sheet there until a French version sits with it. On this route the French cannot be written by just anyone: a sworn translator is required, and that shapes the whole job.
So you order a certified translation into French in Liverpool and the file goes to a traducteur assermenté, a translator who has sworn an oath and may sign under it. Your English paper is untouched. A second, signed sheet is built, and the pair is meant to be read side by side.
Every mark on the sheet crosses over
The whole page crosses over, not only the body text. A stamp in the corner, a reference number down the margin, a line added later in pen: each is set down where it sits. A reader is matching the French against the English, and a gap in either one stops that cold.
Turn the paper over before you scan. Backs carry more than people expect — a registrar's note, a second seal, the rest of a table. A back left out of the image is a back left out of an official French translation in Liverpool, and the job then runs a second time.
Why a part-translation fails
Asking for only the useful half is a false economy. A French sheet covering three sections of a five-section form tells the reader that two were held back, and files come back for exactly that. What looked like a saving turns into a repeat of the same pages, with the wait starting again.
Per-page cost & turnaround
The rate is about £25 for each page of the source paper, counted on sheets rather than on words. The oath, the signature and the seal are inside that figure. A two-sided form is two pages, and a diploma with a transcript behind it is priced by the sheet, not by the qualification.
Standard work takes 2–4 business days from a clean scan. Fewer people hold the oath than work on the open market, so the queue here moves at its own pace. When a term start or a hearing is already fixed, an express run brings the wait down to 24–48 hours.
Acceptance in Guinea
None of this asks your own paper to move. The work runs from an image, so the sheet stays with you. For a birth, marriage or death registered in this city, a fresh certified copy can be ordered from Liverpool Register Office at St George's Hall, St George's Place, Liverpool L1 1JJ.
What a Guinean desk holds at the end is a pair: the English record and a signed French sheet built to match it mark for mark. That pairing is the point of a certified translation for Guinea, so hand the two over as one set.