One letter in a surname got the whole document package rejected

A family was applying for national visas to Spain. In the father's international passport the surname is recorded as SHCHERBAKOV, first name IURII. In the translations of the children's birth certificates the translator wrote "Scherbakov Yuriy". The consulate cross-checked: the father in the passport and the father in the certificates are, formally, people with different names. The whole package was returned. The result — four notarised translations redone, a new appointment for submission (free slots only three weeks out), and the trip pushed back.

Transliteration is not translation, it is matching

Russian names have no single correct Latin form. "Щ" is rendered as SHCH, SCH, or SH; "Ю" as IU, YU, or JU; "Е" at the start as E or YE. Different systems (passport, scholarly, ISO) give different results, and all of them are formally acceptable. That is why state authorities require not the "correct" transliteration but a consistent one: in every document belonging to a person the name must be spelled the same way as in the international passport. The passport is the gold standard.

Hence the rule for the translator: before starting, request a scan of the passport page for everyone whose name appears in the document — the applicant, the spouse, the children, sometimes the parents. If there is no international passport or it has expired, the spelling from previous visas is used, or the form is agreed with the receiving side and fixed in writing. "Just translating by the rules" is not an option here: if the result diverges from the passport, the document will not be accepted.

What to check in the finished translation before certification

Compare every proper name character by character with the international passport: your surname and first name, the children's names, the patronymic (it is not in the international passport — the translator transliterates it on the same principles), the name of a locality if one appears. Separately check document numbers, series, and dates — those are often mistyped too.

One letter in a name is not a trifle or an official's nitpick. For an information system it is a mismatched identifier, and the officer is obliged to react to it with a refusal. Five minutes of matching saves weeks and the money for redone translations.