Guide
Do you need a NAATI translator — or a notary — if your translator is in Israel?
If you have started collecting documents for an Australian visa from Israel, you have almost certainly been told that they must be translated by a NAATI-accredited translator, and possibly that they need a notary as well. On its own visa pages the Department of Home Affairs says something narrower: translators in Australia must be accredited, translators outside Australia do not have to be — provided the translation itself carries a short set of details. Here is that wording, what it asks of a translator sitting in Israel, which Israeli documents end up in the file and what they cost, and the three situations where the rule does not apply.
Which of these are you doing?
Australian routes do not all give the same answer, and most of this page is only relevant to one of them. Start where you are.
What the Department publishes
The Department of Home Affairs sets out what it expects from a translation in the "Prepare your documents" step of its own visa pages. The operative wording is two sentences long:
"Translators in Australia must be accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters. Translators outside Australia do not have to be accredited."
That is departmental guidance published by the Department for applicants — not a provision of Australian migration law. What it changes is the question. It is not which credential your translator holds; it is where your translator is when the work is done, and what the finished translation says on its face.
The wording is stable rather than obscure: the same passage appears on the how-to-apply pages for the streams Israeli applicants actually lodge — Work and Holiday (subclass 462), Student (500), Visitor (600), Partner (309 and 820), Prospective Marriage (300) and Skilled Independent (189) — and a differently worded version of the same instruction sits in the Department's ImmiAccount help text. The full list, with the dates we read them, is at the foot of this page.
The details that must appear on every translation
The exemption is conditional, and the condition is the part worth reading. On the visa pages the passage continues: "But on each translation, they must include their:" — and then lists three items, followed by one further instruction of its own: "These details must be in English."
"full name"
The translator's full name, written on the translation. Not an agency name on its own, and not initials.
"address and telephone number"
A postal address and a telephone number for the translator. This is the element most easily dropped, because a certificate often carries an email address and a website instead — the Department's wording asks for a street address and a telephone number, so both belong on the page.
"qualifications and experience in the language they are translating"
Read the words closely: the subject is the language pair, not a translation degree, and experience is named alongside qualifications rather than beneath it. What the Department asks for is a statement of the translator's qualifications and experience in Hebrew and English — a sentence on the translation, not a folder of certificates attached to it.
For an online application, the Department says you don't need documents certified
In the same passage the Department adds a sentence that is worth more than its length suggests: "Note: You do not need to have any documents certified." On the Visitor (subclass 600) page it appears with the qualifier "unless we ask you to". For an application lodged online, the Department is telling you not to buy a certification step you have not been asked for.
The Department states its own exception, and it is the paper route: the Work and Holiday (subclass 462) page carries a separate branch for paper applications which adds a certify step — "Have all other documents certified. This includes: non-English documents; English translations". That is certification of the copy, not a credential for the translator.
This is worth checking before you pay rather than after. Notarial certification of a translation's correctness in Israel is not priced by the notary: it follows a statutory scale set by regulation, updated each January, and rises with the length of the document, so it is a real per-document cost stacked on top of the translation. If you have been told your Australian visa documents must be notarised, ask for that requirement in writing and read it against the Department's own instruction for an online application. What we charge instead is set out below, beside the documents.
The Israeli documents that end up in the file — and what they cost
Which documents your application needs is set by the checklist your own application generates, not by a translator, and it differs by stream and by circumstance. For the Work and Holiday (subclass 462) stream — the one most Israeli applicants in their twenties lodge themselves — it is usually a short list: the discharge certificate (תעודת שחרור), a bank statement and an account-management letter. What we can tell you is what each of these Hebrew documents is, and what it becomes in English.
What it costs: our per-document prices are published in full on the pricing page — a payslip from ₪99 including VAT (₪85 each for three or more), Form 106 from ₪149, a bank statement of up to three pages from ₪129, and a signed certificate of accuracy included on request. Short documents outside that list, such as a discharge certificate or a bagrut certificate, are quoted individually. Every quote is confirmed with you before any work begins, and the price you accept is the price you pay — most quotes come back within a few hours and always within two business days.
IDF discharge certificate (תעודת שחרור) and exemption certificate (תעודת פטור)
Short documents, and the ones Israeli applicants in the Work and Holiday stream most often need. They carry a service period, a unit or classification and a set of official markings — reproduced in the English rather than summarised, because in our experience a short document that looks retyped draws more questions than a long one.
Birth certificate (תעודת לידה) and the ID appendix (ספח)
Identity and family details. Where a stream asks for evidence of a relationship or of parentage, this is usually where it comes from.
Bagrut certificate and grade transcript (תעודת בגרות, גיליון ציונים)
The Israeli school-leaving certificate and its subject-by-subject grades — dense tables with unit weightings that mean nothing to a reader abroad unless the structure survives the translation. Common in Student (subclass 500) files.
Form 106 (טופס 106)
The annual employer certificate: a full year of pay, tax withheld and contributions in one document with numbered boxes. It is the strongest single income document a salaried Israeli holds, and it is what an income question is usually best answered with.
Bank statements and an account-management letter (אישור ניהול חשבון)
Where your checklist asks you to evidence funds. The account-management letter is the document an Israeli branch issues to confirm that an account exists, since when and in whose name — often the item people report back as unavailable when it is simply called something else in English.
What goes on the translation, and the certificate beside it
Because the Department describes a statement rather than a credential, what matters is what the finished translation says on its face. Tell us the file is for an Australian application and this block goes on the translation itself, in English — the three items the Department names, plus its instruction about the language they are written in.
Alongside it you can have our standard signed certificate of translation accuracy. It is a separate sheet: it names the translator and the company, lists the documents certified and the total number of pages, states the source and target languages, and carries a fixed statement that the translation is, to the best of the translator's knowledge and ability, a true, complete and accurate translation of the Hebrew original and that the translator is competent to translate from Hebrew into English, with no representation as to the authenticity of the original. Beneath the signature it gives the translator's printed name and title, the date of signature, our street address and telephone number in Israel, an email address and the website. It says in its own words what it is not — "This is a translator's self-certification of accuracy. It is not a notarized, sworn or court-certified translation." — and where it matters it can carry the SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact source file translated, so that a reader can confirm which file it attests to. The block on the translation answers the Department; the certificate is the separate signed page that banks, universities and registries elsewhere ask for. Sending both costs nothing extra.
Full name
The translator's full name in English, on each translation — with the practice's name beside it rather than in place of it.
Address and telephone number
A street address and a telephone number in Israel, in English, so that a case officer who wants to verify the translation has a way to do it that does not depend on an inbox.
Qualifications and experience in the language
A sentence stating professional experience translating Hebrew financial and official documents into English, together with any professional-body membership held. Written to answer the Department's words — qualifications and experience in the language being translated. It is the one item the certificate of accuracy does not carry on its own, which is why it goes on the translation for an Australian lodgement.
All of it in English
The block is written in English even though the source document is Hebrew, because that is what the Department's instruction says: "These details must be in English."
Ask whether you can get it in English at source
The cheapest translation is the one you never buy. Some Israeli documents can be issued in English by the office that issued the Hebrew — not all of them, and not always on request, but often enough that the question is worth asking before anything is sent for translation. Ask the issuing office, the bank branch or the institution directly whether an English version is available and what it costs. If the answer is yes, that document is finished; if it is no, you have spent one phone call.
The second question worth asking is whether the document is on your checklist at all. People routinely translate a document because it was on a list they found online rather than on the list their own application generated — and a document nobody asked for costs exactly as much to translate as one that was.
For what is left, send documents as the issuer produced them. A PDF downloaded from your bank's or employer's site is far better than a photograph of a printout, because the text in it is real text — legible, and safe to reproduce exactly. If a scan is all you have, send it and say so: anything we cannot read with certainty is flagged to you rather than guessed at. Your documents are handled in strict confidence — used only to prepare your translations, and never published, shared, or reused for anyone else.
Three things this page doesn't cover
The instruction above is narrower than it first looks. Three limits, none of them fine print.
A translation done inside Australia does need NAATI accreditation
The first half of the Department's sentence is as binding as the second. If the work is done in Australia, the translator must be accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters. The exemption is about where the translator is; inside Australia the credential rule still applies.
A skills assessing authority is a separate body with its own rule
If your file passes through a skills assessing authority before it reaches the Department, that authority sets its own terms. VETASSESS, for instance, publishes that "a registered translation service must be used" — its own wording, not the Department's, and it sits upstream of a skilled visa application. Ask the assessing authority directly what it accepts.
An Australian citizenship application from Israel follows a different instruction
The Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv publishes its own citizenship guidance. For identity documents it asks for a certified English translation by a notary — it says any practising notary in Israel or the Palestinian Territories is acceptable — or by an accredited NAATI translator in Australia, and it adds that some NAATI translators operate from offices outside Australia, including Israel. That is two routes, not one. Pulling the other way, the Department's own citizenship pages say translators outside Australia do not have to be NAATI accredited, and the by-descent page adds "You do not need to have any documents certified." We are a certification-only practice — not a notary, and we do not issue apostilles — so a citizenship identity document that has to be notarised is outside what we do. For citizenship documents, follow the checklist your own application route gives you in writing.
Where we checked
Everything quoted above was read from the publishers' own pages in July 2026. If you want to check the wording for your own stream, these are the pages it appears on.
Department of Home Affairs, "Prepare your documents", on the how-to-apply pages for Work and Holiday (subclass 462), Student (500), Visitor (600), Partner (309 and 820), Prospective Marriage (300) and Skilled Independent (189) — read July 2026. The Department's citizenship pages, which vary among themselves: permanent resident and under-16 say "Every translation should include the translator's", while citizenship by descent and the page for getting a citizenship certificate say "must include" — read July 2026. The ImmiAccount help text, whose wording is "For every translation include the translator's" and which records that it was last updated on 18 May 2026. VETASSESS's own translation requirement, as published July 2026. The Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv's citizenship guidance, as published July 2026; that page carries no date of its own.
Common questions
Do I need a NAATI translator if my translator is in Israel?
On its own visa pages the Department of Home Affairs states: "Translators in Australia must be accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters. Translators outside Australia do not have to be accredited." A translator working in Israel is outside Australia. What the Department asks for instead is that each translation carry the translator's full name, address and telephone number, and their qualifications and experience in the language they are translating, all in English. Two exceptions matter: a translation done inside Australia does have to be accredited, and an Australian citizenship application lodged from Israel runs into a separate set of instructions, set out in the section on what this page doesn't cover.
Does a translation for an Australian visa have to be notarised?
For an application lodged online, the Department's own instruction says "Note: You do not need to have any documents certified" (the Visitor 600 page adds "unless we ask you to"). It states its own exception for paper applications: the Work and Holiday 462 paper branch requires that other documents, including English translations, be certified. Notarial certification of a translation's correctness in Israel follows a statutory scale set by regulation, updated each January, and rises with the length of the document, so it is worth getting any such requirement in writing before paying for it.
Who can translate documents for an Australian visa application?
The Department frames this by location rather than by credential: inside Australia, a translator accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters; outside Australia, a translator who is not required to be accredited but whose full name, address and telephone number, and qualifications and experience in the language must appear on each translation, in English. If a skills assessing authority such as VETASSESS sees your documents first, ask that authority separately — it publishes its own requirement.
What exactly does the translator have to write on the translation?
Three things, all of them in English, on each translation: their full name; their address and telephone number; and their qualifications and experience in the language they are translating. Note what is not on the Department's list — it does not ask for academic certificates to be attached, and it does not list a signature or a date. We sign and date our work regardless, because other destinations do ask for both, but a signature is our practice rather than a Home Affairs requirement.
What does it cost to translate Israeli documents for an Australian application?
Every document is quoted before any work begins: a payslip from ₪99 including VAT (₪85 each for three or more), Form 106 from ₪149, a bank statement of up to three pages from ₪129, and a signed certificate of accuracy included on request; short documents outside that list, such as a discharge certificate, are quoted individually. Two things reduce the bill before you get a quote: ask each issuing office whether it can give you the document in English at source, and check that everything on your list is actually on your application's own document checklist. For an online lodgement the Department says no certification step is needed, so a notary's fee is generally not part of this at all.
Applying for an Australian visa with Israeli documents?
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