How to get medical records translated in Canada

People search for “translate my medical records” for very different reasons, and the answer depends almost entirely on who is going to read the translation.

• A government office deciding an immigration application or a health insurance claim.
• A doctor who reads another language, here or overseas.
• You, or family, trying to understand what a letter actually says.

Those three need three different things, and paying for the wrong one is common. A certified translation of a twenty-page hospital discharge summary takes time and costs money. An app translation is quick, and will not meet Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s translation rules. This guide sorts out which is which.

Everything below about government requirements and professional bodies is linked to the government department, health authority or professional body concerned.

Disclosure

I am a doctor, and I founded exora, a personal health record app that can show your record in other languages for reading. It appears once, near the end, and I am explicit there about what it is not.

When you need a translation at all

The usual situations:

• Immigrating to Canada. Medical evidence, or any supporting document, from another country has to reach IRCC in English or French.
• A new family doctor. You arrive with years of records in Spanish, Tagalog or Punjabi, and your new doctor reads English, or French in much of Quebec.
• Treatment abroad. A surgeon or clinic overseas asks for your scans, results and specialist letters before they will book you.
• A claim. You were treated outside Canada and want your provincial plan, or an insurer, to pay for it.
• Family, here or overseas, who help with care decisions and need to know what the hospital actually said.

The first question in every case is the same: is the reader an official body with rules about translations, or a person who just needs to understand?

Who certifies translators in Canada

There is no single national certification. Certifying translators is a provincial matter, and each province that does it has its own professional body.

The national umbrella is CTTIC, the Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council. CTTIC runs the certification exam for its member societies, but it is explicit that it does not itself grant certification: “the power to certify translators, terminologists and interpreters is a provincial jurisdiction”. Its seven member societies are in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The four largest provinces:

• Ontario: ATIO, the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario. Since 1989, Ontario legislation has given ATIO’s certified members a reserved title, according to ATIO. Only certified members, not candidates, may use the association’s seal, and the seal itself is optional (ATIO FAQ).
• British Columbia: STIBC, the Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia. Since 2015, titles including Certified Translator (C.T.) and Certified Medical Interpreter (C.M.I.) have been protected occupational titles in B.C., usable only by certified STIBC members. It has a find a translator or interpreter directory.
• Alberta: ATIA, the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta, certifies translators and interpreters in Alberta and keeps an online directory.
• Quebec: OTTIAQ, the Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec. It is not a CTTIC member. It is a professional order with a reserved title governed by Quebec’s Professional Code, and it issues licences to practise and monitors misuse of titles, as other professional orders do.

In practice, “certified translation” in Canada means a translation done by a member in good standing of one of these bodies, usually bearing their seal or stamp and membership number. If you are hiring someone, look them up in their body’s directory before you pay.

Immigrating to Canada: what IRCC requires

IRCC’s general rule, on its help centre page on document languages, is: “Unless we tell you otherwise, all supporting documents must be in English or French.” If a document is in another language, that page says you must send:

• the English or French translation,
• an affidavit from the person who completed the translation, and
• a certified photocopy of the original document.

Individual programs set out the detail, and they differ. The Express Entry instructions for applying for permanent residence are a good example of how it works:

• The translation must be either stamped by a certified translator, or accompanied by an affidavit from the person who translated it. The affidavit route is only for when a certified translator cannot do the work.
• A certified translator is “a member in good standing of a professional translation association in Canada or abroad”, confirmed by a seal or stamp showing their membership number. Someone still working towards certification does not count.
• An affidavit is a sworn statement that the translation is accurate, taken in Canada by a notary public, commissioner of oaths or commissioner of taking affidavits, or abroad by a notary public or equivalent.
• The original travels with the translation: you upload a scan of the original document, or of the certified photocopy the translator worked from.
• Family cannot translate. No family member, representative or consultant of the applicant may translate documents, even if they are a lawyer, notary or translator.

Two cautions. Read the instructions for the exact application you are filing, because guides differ in the detail. And note that the translator can be certified “in Canada or abroad”, so if you are still overseas you may not need a Canadian translator at all.

If you have to have an immigration medical exam, it is done by an IRCC-approved panel physician, not your own doctor. IRCC asks you to bring any medical reports or test results for previous or existing conditions, and a list of your current medications. That page sets no translation rule for those reports, so ask the panel physician’s office what language they need before you pay for a translation.

Claims for care outside Canada

If you are treated abroad and claim from your provincial plan, the province sets the language rules:

• Ontario: for an out-of-country emergency claim, OHIP asks for a detailed statement in English or French, with admission and discharge dates, the services, tests and treatment, the discharge diagnosis and an itemized fee for each service, plus original receipts.
• Alberta: “All supporting documents in a foreign language must be translated into English,” and a copy of the original statement and the English translation must both go in with the claim.

Neither page says the translation must be certified. Private travel insurers set their own rules, so ask yours before you translate anything. The cheapest fix is often at the source: ask the hospital abroad, before you leave, for a statement in English or French.

If the record is going the other way, to a hospital or government overseas, the destination country sets the rules. A translator certified in Ontario is the Canadian standard; a clinic in Lisbon may want someone certified in Portugal. Check before you pay twice.

Whoever the reader is, two habits save money:

• Ask first exactly which documents need translating. An officer or insurer may want one specialist report, not your whole history.
• Keep the original with the translation, always. Every requirement above expects it, and it is what lets anyone check the translation against the source.

When you need a person, not a document

A lot of searches for “translate medical records” are really about a conversation. Someone needs to understand their family doctor, or explain their history to one. A written translation is the wrong tool for that. An interpreter is the right one.

Canada has two official languages, but health care is run by the provinces, and language access varies with them:

• British Columbia: the Provincial Health Services Authority’s Provincial Language Services offers spoken-language interpreting in more than 200 languages, 24 hours a day, at no charge to B.C. patients and their families. It has to be requested by your health care provider, so ask yours.
• Alberta: Alberta Health Services says its staff arrange phone, video or in-person interpreters, with phone interpreting in 240 languages and video in over 40. Tell your care team you need one, and in which language and dialect.
• Ontario, in French: the French Language Services Act gives you the right to services in French from provincial ministries and agencies in 25 designated areas of the province and at government head offices, and Ontario Health, as a Crown agency, is bound by it. Hospitals are not automatically covered: only those designated under the Act must offer French services. If a provincial ministry or agency did not give you adequate French-language service, you can complain to the Ontario Ombudsman.
• Quebec, in English: Quebec law recognizes the right of English speakers to health and social services in English, limited by each institution’s resources and by the access program Santé Québec must maintain.

Elsewhere, ask your clinic or health authority what it offers. Whatever the province, tell the clinic when you book that you need an interpreter.

Please do not rely on a child or a relative to interpret a medical appointment. Consent, a new diagnosis and medicine instructions are exactly the moments where a word missed or softened matters.

When reading it is enough

Then there is the third reader: a person who just needs to understand. Your mother reading her own discharge summary. A brother in Lima helping decide about an operation. A new family doctor who wants the gist of your old records from Mexico before the appointment, and will ask for a proper translation of the one report that matters.

None of them needs a stamp. They need the content in their language, accurately, and some way to check it against the original. For this, a translation for reading is the right tool, and it is worth being clear about what a good one looks like:

• Numbers must survive. A dose, a date or a result changed in translation is the error that hurts people.
• Medical names should be the real names, not a literal word-for-word rendering. A medicine’s brand name also changes from country to country.
• The original should be one tap or one page away, so anyone who doubts a line can check it.

Pasting a whole medical record into a general translation website is what most people reach for. It handles none of those three reliably, it is neither stamped nor sworn, so it will not do for IRCC or a claim, and it means handing your health information to a service that was never built to hold it.

Where exora fits

exora is for the third reader. You upload documents, such as PDFs, photos and scans, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. It builds one record from them, and that record reads in English, Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese. Change the language and your conditions, medicines, allergies and operations change with it, and so do many sentences, such as a medicine’s instructions, once their translation has been checked. Tap “Original wording” and the document’s own words are underneath. The documents you uploaded stay as they were. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.

Each sentence translation is written, checked, any doubt is settled, and then every number is compared with the original. One that changes a number is never shown; you see the original wording instead. A doctor you share your record with can pick their own language for its names. And if you write to the chat in Spanish, it explains your record in Spanish. The translation feature page has the details, including what stays in English for now.

Your health data is never used to train AI models. It is stored in Sydney, Australia, which is outside Canada. Details are on our security page.

Where it does not help:

• It is not a certified translation. Nothing exora produces will satisfy IRCC, a provincial health plan, a court or an insurer that asks for one. For those, use a certified translator.
• No connection to any provincial portal or hospital system. You download or request your records, then upload them. It is a manual step.
• No Canadian certification. It is not certified by any Canadian health authority or translation body.
• It can misread. The reading and translation are automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why the original is always one tap away.
• It is not medical advice. It organizes and presents your information. It does not diagnose or tell you what to do.

If you still need the records themselves, our guide to getting your medical records in Canada covers how to ask. If you are moving countries rather than visiting, moving countries with your medical records covers what to request before you leave.

The short version

Work out who will read the translation. IRCC wants an English or French translation by a certified translator, or one backed by the translator’s sworn affidavit, with the original attached and never done by family. A provincial plan wants claims in English or French, or translated, with the original. A conversation with your doctor needs an interpreter, which B.C., for one, provides at no charge. And for you, your family or a doctor who just needs to understand, a careful translation for reading, with the original beside it, is enough.

Claims about immigration requirements, provincial health plans, language services and translator certification are sourced to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, provincial governments, health authorities and the translation bodies themselves, linked inline, and were checked on November 9, 2026. Requirements change, and differ between applications; always read the instructions for the one you are filing. This article is general information, not medical, legal or immigration advice.