Most certified translation services give you a translator's statement. Here the translation is certified by a lawyer registered with the Portuguese Bar Association and every certification carries a registration number that the receiving authority can verify.
The two are priced differently because they are, in substance, different services. One is a regulated act with legal effect in Portugal. The other is a certified translation for use in the United States.
A printed original, signed by hand and posted to you, is available on any order for $24.90 plus postage at cost. Not everyone needs it — most authorities now accept the signed PDF — so it is offered rather than assumed.
The translation is a service. The certification is a lawyer's professional act, registered with the Portuguese Bar Association under a number of its own. Whoever receives your document does not have to trust us — they confirm the registration themselves, without calling anybody.
| Translation agency | "Certified translator" | Here | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is on the document | the company's stamp and signature | a signed certificate of accuracy | a lawyer's certification term, his licence number, and the registration of the act |
| Who answers for it | the company, for as long as it exists | whoever signed, on no public register | a lawyer on a public register, subject to professional discipline |
| How the receiver checks | telephones the agency | cannot check | consults the Bar register with the number and the code |
| If anyone questions it | the company's word | the signer's word | the register |
Example of the block printed at the end of your certificate
EXECUTADO A: 2026-09-05 14:07 REGISTADO A: 2026-09-05 14:39 COM O Nº: 58638L/10126 Poderá consultar este registo em oa.pt/atos usando o código 41220988-773104
The block is printed in Portuguese because it is the Bar Association's own wording, transcribed exactly as the register returns it. The act is registered before the PDF is issued: no registration, no document.
You do not have to take our word for any of this, and neither does the institution receiving your document. The Bar Association runs a public lookup, and it asks for one thing: the code.
oa.pt/atos, leads there.Portuguese Bar Association — an official register, not a page of ours. Try it with any code you already hold.
In Portugal and in the United States, "certified translator" is not a regulated profession — no authority issues that licence. This is not a criticism of anyone who does the work well. It is the reason a translation stamp cannot be checked anywhere.
Before you order from anyone else, ask one question: what is the registration number, and where do I check it?
What is registered with the Bar Association is the lawyer's act, not the nationality of the paper. A birth certificate issued in Luanda, Maputo, Praia, Dili or São Paulo is Portuguese in writing, and goes through exactly the same route as one from Porto. A diploma from Dublin, Toronto, Sydney or Johannesburg is English in writing, and goes through the same route as one from New York.
What each receiving institution accepts is its own decision, and we do not speak for any of them. In Portugal a lawyer's certification has effect by force of Article 38 of Decree-Law 76-A/2006. Everywhere else, what your document carries is an act on a public register — which is what the person receiving it can confirm without having to ask us anything.
Most services charge per page. That means a birth certificate with three hundred words costs the same as a contract page with nine hundred — which is unfair to one of you and unsustainable for us.
So the unit here is a page of ordinary density: roughly 500 words. Nearly every civil registry certificate — birth, marriage, death, criminal record — is one unit, however full the page looks. A dense contract or academic transcript page counts as one and a half, sometimes two. Nothing counts as more than four.
The count is not something you have to work out, and it is not something you are asked to declare. We open the file and count it ourselves, before any money moves, and you see the number before you confirm.
Scan or photograph it. Before anything else, the file is checked for legibility — if the text cannot be read reliably, we tell you exactly what is wrong and ask for a better copy. That check happens before payment.
Your card is authorised for the estimate, not charged. We then count the document ourselves and charge the real amount — frequently less, because blank and duplicate pages drop out. If it comes out higher, we ask first and you can walk away at no cost.
The translation is prepared and then reviewed line by line against the original before anything is certified. Names, registration numbers and dates are checked individually, because that is where errors do the damage.
The certification term is drawn up, the act is registered with the Portuguese Bar, the document is signed and sent to you as a PDF. Usually within one working day of the review.
Nothing is charged at this stage. We look at the file, confirm it is legible and tell you the exact price before any work begins.
If it turns out your document needs a different service — an apostille first, or a route we do not cover — we will say so rather than take the order.
Accepted formats
PDF, JPG, PNG or HEIC. Up to 30 pages per order — beyond that we quote case by case.
What makes a file usable
If we cannot read it, we do not translate it. A blurred, cut, dark or partially covered document is refused before any work begins: we cancel the order, release the hold on your card in full, and email you exactly which page is the problem and what to send instead. It costs you nothing, and you can order again with a better copy. We would rather refuse a file than certify a translation of something we had to guess.
Klaus Luchtenberg is a lawyer registered with the Portuguese Bar Association practising from Carcavelos. He works between Portugal, Brazil and the United States, on residence and nationality files, corporate structuring and the documents that go with them — which is how this service came about.
The certification is his personal professional act. The order is contracted and invoiced by O Gravata Consulting LLC, but no company certifies anything on his behalf: the licence number on your document belongs to a real person on a public register, and the responsibility for what that document says is his.
For the United States, less than you might think — USCIS asks for a translator's certificate of accuracy, and a cheaper service satisfies that. The difference here is that a named lawyer signs it and the act carries a Bar registration number, which matters when a document is questioned. For Portugal the difference is categorical: a certification by a lawyer registered with the Portuguese Bar Association has legal effect there, and an American agency cannot produce one at any price.
The first draft is prepared with software, and then read line by line against the original by a person who corrects it and takes responsibility for it in writing. That is not a formality: the certification term is a declaration on someone's honour, and it would be worthless if nobody had read the text. What the software buys you is speed and a lower price, not an absence of human work.
Because at the moment you press the button, neither of us knows the exact size of the job — you are estimating the pages, and we have not opened the file yet. Charging on an estimate means either overcharging you and refunding later, or coming back to ask for more, and both are unpleasant. An authorisation holds the amount without taking it; the charge that actually appears on your statement is the correct one, once. The hold is deliberately set one unit above the estimate, so that a page which turns out denser than expected does not interrupt your order with a second small payment — you are charged what the document costs, and the rest of the hold is released. If the count comes out above even that, nothing is charged until you agree.
Because pages vary enormously. A civil registry certificate runs to about three hundred words; a page of a contract can run to nine hundred. Charging the same for both means the person with the short document is subsidising the person with the long one. A unit is a page of ordinary density, around 500 words — nearly every single-page civil registry document is exactly one unit, and you are never asked to work the count out yourself.
We check that first, before you pay. If the scan is too low in resolution, or the photograph has glare across half the page, you get told what is wrong and asked for a better copy. Nobody guesses at a birth date because the scan was poor.
Usually one working day from the moment the document passes the legibility check, for documents of a few pages. Longer files and unusual documents take longer, and you will be told the timing when the price is confirmed rather than after.
Certifications made under Article 38 of Decree-Law 76-A/2006 and registered with the Bar are the standard route in Portugal, and the certificate of accuracy is the standard route in the United States. That said, each institution sets its own requirements, and some ask for an apostille on the original document as well — which is a separate step, obtained from the authority that issued it. If you tell us where the document is going, we will tell you what we know about that route.
Then this is not what you need, and it is better to know now. For official use inside Brazil the translation has to be done by a tradutor público e intérprete comercial — a sworn public translator, appointed by examination and registered with the Junta Comercial of the relevant state. A Portuguese lawyer's certification does not replace that appointment, however valid it is in Portugal.
What we do for people with a Brazilian connection is the other direction, which is also the more common one: Brazilian documents translated into English, and documents in English translated into Portuguese for use in Portugal — nationality, residence, civil registry, universities.
Only for as long as needed to prepare and deliver the work, and to keep the record the Bar requires of a certified act. Documents are covered by professional secrecy under Article 92 of the Statute of the Portuguese Bar Association. The privacy notice sets out the detail.
Write to contacttranslations@ogravata.com. A person reads it — the same person who certifies the translations. If your question is whether this route is the right one for the institution you are dealing with, say which institution and which country, because that is what the answer depends on.
Who you are dealing with. Your contract is with O Gravata Consulting LLC, a company registered in Florida, United States, which takes the order, issues the invoice and answers to you commercially. The translation and the certification of its fidelity are personal professional acts of Klaus Luchtenberg, a lawyer registered with the Portuguese Bar Association under licence no. 58.638/L, performed in Portugal under his own licence and registered with the Bar under it. The company does not certify anything, and cannot direct him on the content of a certification: that responsibility is personal to the lawyer and is not delegable.
Important information. Neither the company nor the lawyer is a government body, and neither has any affiliation with, endorsement from or authorisation by the Portuguese government, AIMA, any Portuguese consulate, USCIS or any other public authority.
A certified translation is a translation accompanied by a certification of its fidelity. It does not authenticate the underlying document, does not replace an apostille, and does not oblige any institution to accept it. Each receiving institution sets its own requirements. Where a document also needs an apostille, that is obtained from the authority that issued the document, not from us.
Professional activity is carried out under the Statute of the Portuguese Bar Association and is subject to its rules of professional conduct, including professional secrecy.