How to Choose a Translation Agency in Cardiff: Five Checks That Take Ten Minutes

Search for a translation agency in Cardiff and you will find pages of results that all say the same things: fast, certified, accepted everywhere, five stars. Some of those claims are true. Some are marketing written to look like facts. The good news is that you can separate one from the other in about ten minutes, for free, before you pay anyone. Here are the five checks we would run on any agency, including ourselves.

Check 1: Look the company up on Companies House

Every UK limited company has a free public record at Companies House showing when it was incorporated, who runs it, and where it is registered. Two minutes here tells you a lot. If a website says "15 years of experience" but the company behind it was registered six months ago, the experience belongs to someone else, often a parent company abroad. If the registered office is a virtual-office address used by thousands of companies, that is worth knowing too. None of this automatically makes an agency bad, but the gap between the marketing and the record tells you how the company talks about itself.

Our record: Lingo Service Translations Ltd has traded since 2012, from Cardiff. You can check it in less time than it took to read this paragraph.

Check 2: Make sure the reviews belong to the company you are paying

Review counts are the most borrowed trust signal on the internet. Some agencies display a large Google review count that actually belongs to a sister company in another country, or link to a Trustpilot profile for a different legal entity. Click the review badge and look at where it goes: is it the same company name, the same domain, the same country? Then look at the reviews themselves. Are they recent? Are the reviewers in the UK? A handful of five-star reviews posted around the company's launch date, from accounts abroad, is a pattern worth noticing.

Check 3: Ask who signs the certification

A certified translation for UKVI, the Home Office or a UK court needs a signed statement confirming the translation is accurate and complete, with the translator's credentials and the company's contact details. So ask: which company signs yours? Some websites sell in the UK but certify through an overseas entity, and some terms and conditions quietly admit that acceptance by UK authorities is not guaranteed even while the sales page says the opposite. Read the certification section of the terms before paying. Every translation we certify is signed by our UK team, under our ISO 17100 quality process, and we are a corporate member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Check 4: Get the final price before you pay, not after

"From £25" is not a price, it is an opening line. The pattern to avoid: you upload your document, pay a deposit or the full amount up front, and then a human reviews the file and tells you the real number, sometimes with VAT appearing at the end. The honest version is the reverse: you see the exact, final price before any money changes hands. Our quote tool shows the full price in under 60 seconds, certification included, and that number does not change afterwards.

Check 5: Ask what happens if an authority queries the translation

The test of a certified translation service is not the happy path, it is what happens when a caseworker raises a question. Look for a written guarantee: free correction, free reissue, refund if the work is genuinely at fault. If the terms say delivery dates are estimates and acceptance is your problem, the risk sits with you. Ours is simple: across more than 50,000 documents since 2012, 99% were accepted first time, and if any UK authority queries our work we fix it free or refund you.

The Cardiff-specific questions

If you are in Cardiff or anywhere in Wales, add two local checks. First, Welsh: if your document needs English-Welsh translation to the standards expected by the Welsh Government, the Senedd or a Welsh public body, ask whether the agency has native Welsh translators or outsources them. Second, courts and universities: ask whether the agency's translations have actually been used at Cardiff Crown Court, the Civil and Family Justice Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff Met or USW. Local acceptance history matters more than any badge.

The ten-minute checklist

• Companies House: does the trading history match the marketing claims?
• Reviews: same company, same country, recent, verifiable?
• Certification: signed by whom, in which country, under what standard?
• Price: exact and final before payment, VAT included?
• Guarantee: what happens, in writing, if an authority queries the work?
• For Wales: native Welsh capability and local acceptance history?

If you want to see how we answer all six, our certified translation Cardiff page covers documents, pricing and turnaround, and the instant quote shows your exact price in under a minute. No deposit, no surprises, and a Cardiff company you can look up.