Bulgaria begins issuing trilingual birth, marriage and death certificates
Municipalities in Bulgaria began on December 19 2013 issuing birth, marriage and death certificates in three languages – Bulgarian, English and French.
The certificates will be recognised by 23 countries without requiring translation or legalisation, according to a report by bTV.
There were some teething troubles as instructions for issuing the documents were received “literally at the last minute,” the report said.
Trilingual certificates are issued only on request and do not replace existing certificates of birth, marriage and death.
From Svilengrad, bTV reported that in spite of the teething troubles, issuing of the trilingual documents took just a few minutes, with the Latin version of names taken directly from the national database.
Errors on the new-style certificates were possible, the report said, citing the example of Penka Baldzhieva of Svilengrad whose family members had their surname transliterated from Cyrillic with the fourth letter (ж) rendered variously as “zh” and “g”.
(Photo: loleia/sxc.hu)
