Tagalog Translation Services

Where Tagalog is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Tagalog is the language of Manila and of much of central and southern Luzon, and it is the base of Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, which is official together with English. It has more than 20 million native speakers, and most of the more than 100 million people of the Philippines speak or understand Filipino. Large communities also live abroad: more than 4 million people of Filipino descent live in the United States, above all in California and Hawaii, and many more work in Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Italy. The destination decides the type of translation.

Tagalog translation services for documents from the Philippines

Tagalog has regional varieties, such as those of Manila, Batangas, Bulacan and Marinduque, and Filipino is the standard national form, built on Tagalog with words from English, Spanish and other Philippine languages. Many Philippine records are issued in English, so what a good translation reads carefully is the Tagalog in letters, affidavits and notes, the names and the dates.

• Vocabulary: everyday Tagalog mixes in English, a style called Taglish, and keeps hundreds of Spanish words, such as mesa for table and bintana, from ventana, for window. Times and prices are often said with Spanish numbers, so alas tres is three o’clock.
• Names: a Filipino name has a given name, a middle name that is the mother’s maiden surname and the father’s surname, as in Jose Protacio Rizal. A married woman usually takes her husband’s surname, and her maiden surname becomes her middle name. US forms often drop the middle name, so the translation keeps every name exactly as in the original.
• Alphabet and spelling: the modern Filipino alphabet, adopted in 1987, has 28 letters, including Ñ and NG, while older texts use the 20 letters of the Abakada. Many surnames are Spanish, such as Santos or Reyes, and the spelling of your passport is the reference.
• Dates and numbers: Philippine documents often write dates as month, day and year, as in the United States, so 10/03/2026 is October 3, while forms such as the birth certificate have separate boxes for day, month and year. Decimals use a period and thousands a comma.
• Documents: the birth, marriage and death certificates issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the Certificate of No Marriage Record (CENOMAR), the barangay certificate and sworn statements (sinumpaang salaysay) are the most common. The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note.