Terms and conditions
These terms govern orders for certified translations placed through translations.ogravata.com. They are written to be read, not to be survived.
Version of 6 September 2026
translations@, privacy@ e contacttranslations@ogravata.com.
1. Who you are contracting with
Two different people are involved in your order, with two different responsibilities. Confusing them would be convenient for us and unfair to you, so they are set out separately.
O GRAVATA CONSULTING LLC, a limited liability company registered in the State of Florida, United States, document no. L25000194740, with its principal address at 2295 S Hiawassee Rd, Ste 104, Orlando, FL 32835, is the party you contract with. It receives your order, holds and takes the payment, issues the invoice, sends you the messages about your order, and answers to you for the commercial side of the service. In these terms it is called the company.
What the company sells and invoices is a translation service. It does not invoice legal fees, and no part of the price is a charge for legal advice. The lawyer performs the translation and the certification under an arrangement with the company; that arrangement is internal and does not affect you — your contractual rights are against the company, and your rights in respect of the certified act are against the lawyer, under Portuguese law.
Klaus Luchtenberg, a lawyer registered with the Ordem dos Advogados (Portuguese Bar Association) under licence no. 58.638/L, performs the translation and certifies it. He does so in his own name, under his own licence, in Portugal. The certificate is his act, the Bar registration is made under his licence, and the professional responsibility for what the certificate says is his personally. In these terms he is called the lawyer.
2. What the service is
You send a document. It is checked for legibility, translated, read line by line against the original by the lawyer, corrected, and certified. The certification is registered with the Ordem dos Advogados and the registration details appear on the document itself. You receive a PDF; a printed and hand-signed original is available at extra cost.
Two products are offered, and they are not interchangeable:
- Certified translation for Portugal (English → Portuguese) — a certification under Article 38 of Decree-Law 76-A/2006, registered with the Bar, for use before Portuguese authorities and other bodies that accept it.
- Certified translation for the United States (Portuguese → English) — a certificate of accuracy signed by the lawyer, in the form generally required by USCIS and by American institutions, carrying his Bar registration number.
3. What the service is not
- It is not legal advice, and ordering a translation does not create a lawyer–client relationship for advice on your immigration, nationality or other matter.
- It does not authenticate the underlying document. Certifying a translation says the translation is faithful; it says nothing about whether the original is genuine.
- It does not replace an apostille or a consular legalisation. Where the receiving authority requires one, it is obtained from the authority that issued the document.
- It does not oblige any institution to accept the document. Each receiving institution sets its own requirements, and some have requirements that no supplier can guarantee in advance.
- Neither the company nor the lawyer is a government body, or affiliated with, endorsed by or authorised by any government, consulate, AIMA, USCIS or other public authority.
4. Price, and how the count works
Prices are in US dollars and are shown on the order page. The billing unit is a unit of about 300 words (1,800 characters), not a page. A page with more text counts as more than one unit, up to a maximum of four units per page. Blank pages are not counted. A page that is an exact duplicate of another page in the same order is counted once.
The count is made by us, from the file you send, after it is received. It is not made from what you estimate on the order form, and you are never asked to work it out yourself. The file you send is fingerprinted when it arrives, so the order is tied to the exact file that was counted.
Postage for a printed original is charged at cost and is shown to you before it is added.
5. Authorisation, and the charge that follows
When you place an order, your card is authorised for the estimated amount. It is not charged. The authorisation places a hold on the funds with your bank and, if nothing is captured, it is released.
What happens next depends on the count:
| Situation | What we do |
|---|---|
| The count matches the estimate | We charge the authorised amount. |
| The count comes out lower | We charge the lower amount. The remainder of the hold is released automatically by the payment provider. There is no refund to process and no second movement on your statement. |
| The count comes out higher | We tell you the count, explain it, and ask. Nothing above the authorised amount is charged without your agreement. If you agree, the difference is a separate payment. If you do not, you may cancel and the hold is released. |
| The document is refused as illegible | The authorisation is cancelled and the hold released. You are told exactly what is wrong and may send a better copy, which starts a new order. |
An authorisation is valid for a limited period set by the card networks — normally seven days. If the work has not been able to proceed within that period, the hold expires on its own and a new authorisation is needed. Payment is processed by our payment provider; card details are entered on their secure page and are never received or stored by us. The charge appears on your statement as OGRAVATA TRANSL.
6. Legibility, and documents we will not work from
Before anything is charged, the document is checked automatically for resolution, contrast, cropping, glare and completeness. If it fails, you are told what failed and asked for a better copy, at no cost.
We do not guess. A date of birth that cannot be read is marked as illegible in the translation, not inferred. If a document is partly illegible but usable, you are told before the work proceeds, so that you can decide whether a partly-marked translation is of use to you.
7. Time
The usual turnaround is one working day from the moment a document passes the legibility check, for documents of a few units. Longer or unusual documents take longer, and you are given the timing when the price is confirmed. Times are targets, not guarantees, and they do not run while an order is waiting for something from you — a better copy, an answer, or agreement to an adjusted amount.
8. Delivery
You receive an email with a secure link. The document is not sent as an email attachment: ordinary email is not a suitable channel for a criminal record certificate or a medical report, and the privacy notice promises encryption that an attachment would not honour.
The link is valid for 30 days and can be used more than once in that period. You are reminded before it expires. After it expires, ask and it will be reissued while the file is still within the retention period set out in the privacy notice.
Where a printed original is ordered, it is signed by hand and posted to the address you give. Delivery times of the postal service are outside our control, and we do not insure the item unless you ask for and pay for that.
9. Corrections
If the translation contains an error that is ours — a mistranslation, a transposed number, a name spelled differently from the original — tell us and it is corrected and re-certified at no charge, for six months from delivery. This is not a goodwill gesture; a certification of fidelity that is not faithful is a defect in the thing you bought.
What is not a correction, and is charged as new work: a translation of a different or corrected version of the original document; a change of the target country or format after delivery; a request to alter the translation so that it does not match the original — which will be refused, because the certificate says the translation is faithful and the lawyer's declaration is made on his honour.
Spellings of proper names are copied from the original document. If you need a name rendered as it appears in another document — a passport, for instance — tell us when you order, and send that document.
10. Cancelling, and the right of withdrawal
You may cancel at any time before the translation is certified, and nothing is charged: the authorisation is released.
If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a contract concluded at a distance. Because this service is prepared specifically for you and delivered quickly, that right ends once the service has been fully performed, provided you asked for performance to begin within the withdrawal period and acknowledged that you would lose the right once it was complete. That acknowledgement is the consent box you tick on the order page. Until certification, the right remains, and you can use it without giving a reason.
Once a certification has been made and registered with the Bar, it cannot be unmade. At that point the work has been done and is charged.
11. What we ask of you
- That you are entitled to send us the document and to have it translated. Documents about other people — a parent's certificate, a child's record — are sent legitimately every day; we assume you have the right, and you confirm that you do.
- That the document you send is the complete document, and is genuine.
- That the contact details you give are yours and are correct. Delivery goes to the email address on the order.
The lawyer may decline any order — including one already authorised — where he considers that accepting it would conflict with his professional duties, where the document appears to be falsified, or where the request is to certify something that is not accurate. In that case nothing is charged and any hold is released.
12. Confidentiality
Everything you send is covered by the professional secrecy of a lawyer under Article 92 of the Statute of the Ordem dos Advogados. That duty binds the lawyer personally, has no expiry, and is not something the company can waive for commercial reasons. How your data is handled, by whom, on what legal basis and for how long is set out in the privacy notice, which forms part of these terms.
13. Liability
The company's liability to you under this contract is limited to the amount you paid for the order concerned, except where liability cannot lawfully be limited — which includes death or personal injury, fraud, and rights a consumer holds under the mandatory law of their country of residence.
Neither party is liable for a failure caused by something outside its reasonable control, and neither is liable for an institution's decision to refuse a document, which is that institution's to make.
14. Complaints
Write to contacttranslations@ogravata.com with your reference. Commercial complaints are handled by the company. A complaint about the professional conduct of the lawyer may also be made directly to the Ordem dos Advogados, which is independent of both of us; that route is yours by right and does not require our agreement.
The company is not a member of any consumer arbitration body. Membership of one is voluntary for a service of this kind, and the company is not established in Portugal. None of that removes any right you hold as a consumer under the law of the country where you live, including the right to go to the courts there.
15. Law
These terms are governed by Portuguese law. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the country where you habitually reside, and you keep whatever right you have to bring proceedings there. The professional act of certification is governed by Portuguese law in any event, because that is the law under which it exists.
16. Changes
These terms may change. The version that applies to your order is the one published when you placed it, and the date at the top identifies it. Changes are not applied retroactively to work already ordered.