Quick summary: Two different questions get asked as one. Which documents and pages you need translated is decided by the authority receiving them — ask, do not assume. What happens within a page you have chosen to translate is not a matter of preference: everything on it is part of the record, including stamps, endorsements, marginal notes and the reverse side. Send the translator the whole document, and make the scope decision deliberately.
People asking this are usually trying to reduce the cost of a long document, which is reasonable. A forty-page bank statement translated in full costs considerably more than three pages of it.
There is a useful answer, but it is not the one most people expect, because the question contains two separate problems.
Question one: which pages does the recipient want?
This is not yours to decide, and it is not the translator's either.
The organisation receiving your documents sets the requirement. A visa case officer, a university admissions team, a licensing body and an employer will each want something different from the same document, and none of them is bound by what another accepted.
The Department of Home Affairs' evidence requirements state that where a document is not in English you provide both the original document and the English translation — and that if satisfactory evidence is not provided, the application may be refused.
That is the risk in one sentence. Under-translating is not a saving if it produces a refusal, or a request for more information months later.
So ask, in writing, before you order. "Do you require the complete document translated, or specified pages?" is a one-line email, and the answer governs everything that follows.
Question two: what happens inside a page you do translate?
Here there is no discretion at all.
A certified translation asserts that the translation corresponds to the source. Everything appearing on a translated page is part of that source, not only the paragraphs of text:
- stamps and seals, including ones that look routine
- endorsements and marginal annotations
- handwritten additions, including corrections and initials
- reference numbers, registry marks and printer codes
- anything on the reverse of the page
- signatures, and notations about them
A translator cannot silently omit a stamp because it seems administrative, or leave out a handwritten note because it is hard to read. If something is illegible it is recorded as illegible. It is not skipped.
Why blank pages still matter
Send the pages that look empty.
Some carry a faint endorsement, a security watermark, a punch-hole notation, or a printed statement that the page is intentionally blank — which itself shows the document is complete. And a document running 1, 2, 4, 5 invites an obvious question about page 3, which you will be answering at exactly the wrong moment.
Disclosing a blank page costs nothing. Explaining a gap costs time.
The per-page certification requirement
There is a structural reason page count matters, unrelated to word count.
For translations submitted to DFAT for legalisation, the translator's practitioner ID, the language and type of certification, their name, the date and their signature or digital authentication must appear on every translated page, with a copy of the original document signed or stamped by the translator accompanying it. NAATI recommends translators adopt that as standard practice for any translation work.
So every page carries certification handling of its own. That is why translating half a document is not half the price of translating all of it, and why "just the important bits" saves less than people assume.
Where partial translation goes wrong most often
Bank statements
A bank statement translation cut down to "the pages showing the balance" removes the continuity that makes the balance meaningful. Assessors generally want an unbroken period, not highlights.
Academic transcripts
An academic transcript usually carries its grading scale, institution details and authentication on pages containing no results at all. Drop those and the results become uninterpretable.
Family registers and multi-page contracts
In a family register or household book, historical entries establish the relationships the current entry depends on. In a contract, the annexures and schedules are where the operative detail often sits.
The pattern is consistent: the pages that look skippable are frequently the ones that make the rest verifiable.
A sensible ordering process
- Ask the receiving authority what they require — complete document, or specified pages.
- Send the translator everything, including reverse sides and blank pages, whatever the answer.
- State the scope explicitly when you order, so it is a recorded decision rather than an assumption.
- Ask for a quote both ways if cost is the concern. The difference is often smaller than expected.
- Keep the full document so the recipient can see it alongside the translation.
Steps 2 and 3 are not in conflict. The translator needs the whole document to understand what they are working with and to certify a complete copy of the original. That is separate from which pages you have asked them to translate.
If you are told "just the relevant pages"
Get it in writing, and note who said it. If the file is later reviewed by someone else, that instruction is your explanation for the scope.
Then make sure the translation itself shows the scope, so nobody reading it later mistakes a deliberate partial translation for a complete one.
Before you order
The saving from a partial translation is real but modest. The downside — a request for more information, or a refusal for insufficient evidence — is neither.
Ask the recipient, send the translator everything, and make the scope an explicit decision. NAATI publishes its practitioner identification guidance and Home Affairs its document requirements; both change over time, so confirm current expectations with the authority you are actually lodging with.