Financial Translation in Georgia

Financial statements and audit reports

Georgian companies above the statutory thresholds prepare financial statements under IFRS or IFRS for SMEs and file them with the Service for Accounting, Reporting and Auditing Supervision; many also report to foreign parent companies, lenders and investors in English. We translate complete sets of financial statements (statement of financial position, statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income, statement of changes in equity, statement of cash flows and the notes), management reports and audit reports, using the English terminology of the IFRS standards themselves so that a reader familiar with the standards recognizes each caption immediately. In the other direction, we translate foreign subsidiaries' and parents' statements into Georgian for consolidation, tax and regulatory purposes.

Numbers are the core of these documents, and they are checked separately from the text: every figure in every table is compared with the source, totals are verified, and formatting conventions are aligned (Georgian statements often use a comma as a decimal separator and a space as a thousands separator, which an English-language reader may misread). Audit reports are translated with the standard wording of the ISA opinion paragraphs, because a lender or regulator will look for that wording specifically.

Tax, customs and regulatory correspondence

Foreign-owned companies in Georgia and Georgian companies with foreign advisers need tax documents in two languages: tax returns and declarations, Revenue Service audit notices, decisions and appeals, transfer pricing documentation, advance tax rulings, VAT and excise correspondence, customs declarations and rulings, double tax treaty residency certificates and free industrial zone and international company status documentation. These are translated with the terminology of the Georgian Tax Code in its official English version, so that the client's foreign advisers and the Georgian authority are talking about the same provisions.

Deadlines in tax matters are statutory and short. Appeals and responses to audit findings are usually translated within a day or two, and we work with the client's tax adviser to keep defined terms and positions consistent across the correspondence of a dispute that may run for months.

Banking, lending and security documentation

Georgian banks, microfinance organizations and their foreign lenders, and Georgian borrowers dealing with foreign banks and development finance institutions, generate loan agreements, facility letters, security packages (pledges, mortgages, guarantees, assignments), intercreditor agreements, covenant compliance certificates, KYC and compliance questionnaires, and correspondence on waivers and amendments. We translate these in both directions with the terminology of Georgian security law and international loan market practice, keep the defined terms of the facility agreement consistent through every ancillary document, and can notarize the translations that must be registered with the Public Registry or presented to a Georgian notary.

Compliance documentation has become a large part of financial translation: source of funds and source of wealth explanations, beneficial ownership declarations, sanctions questionnaires and internal policies requested by correspondent banks and payment providers. These often carry deadlines of days, and we translate the whole chain (statements, contracts, registry extracts, tax documents) in one order so that the compliance officer sees consistent names and figures. Our bank statement page covers the personal and small-business side of this work.

Investment, fund and capital markets materials

Investors looking at Georgian companies and Georgian companies raising capital need information memoranda, business plans and financial models with narrative, term sheets, subscription and shareholder agreements, valuation reports, due diligence reports, bond prospectuses and stock exchange disclosures, fund documentation and investor updates. These documents combine legal, financial and marketing registers, and the translation must be precise in the numbers and terms while reading naturally to an investor. We assign a financial translator and a reviewer with legal experience for the contractual parts, and keep the glossary of the transaction across the whole document set.

Fintech and payment companies, of which Georgia has a growing number, need terms of service, user agreements, AML and KYC policies, regulatory license applications and correspondence with the National Bank of Georgia translated into Georgian and English. Regulatory texts are translated with the terminology of the National Bank's own English publications.

Process, formats and confidentiality

Financial documents usually arrive as Excel workbooks, PDFs exported from accounting systems and Word documents with embedded tables. We work in the native format, preserve formulas and links in spreadsheets where the client sends the workbook, and return documents in the same layout so that tables align with the source for side-by-side review. Large statement sets are scheduled in stages, with the primary statements delivered first and the notes following, so that the finance team or auditor can start review early.

Corporate and financial data is handled under non-disclosure agreements where required, with access limited to the assigned translator and reviewer and transfer through encrypted channels or the client's own portal. Certified translations with a statement of accuracy are available for regulators, lenders and courts, and notarized translations are prepared where a Georgian authority or registry requires them. Pricing is by volume, with volume rates for recurring quarterly and annual reporting.

Where financial translations go wrong, and how the check catches it

The errors that matter in financial translation are rarely linguistic. A transposed digit in a balance sheet total, a thousands separator read as a decimal point, a currency code dropped from a note, a "profit" that should have been a "loss" because the sign was in the column heading rather than the cell, a caption translated as "revenue" on one page and "income" on the next, a fiscal year given as a calendar year, an IFRS standard cited by an outdated title. Each of these passes a normal proofread because the sentence still reads well; each is caught by a data-focused check that compares every number with the source, re-adds totals, verifies signs, and confirms that each caption is translated identically wherever it appears.

Terminology errors are the second category. Georgian accounting has its own vocabulary shaped by the tax code and by earlier national standards, and a translator who reaches for a dictionary produces "capital" where IFRS says "equity", "debtors" where the statements use "trade receivables", or "amortization" for tangible assets. Our financial translators work from the IFRS glossary in both languages and from the client's prior statements, and the reviewer checks captions against the standards rather than against general usage. The third category is structural: a note reference that points to the wrong note after translation, a table split across pages so that the heading is lost, a footnote symbol changed. These are checked in the final format pass, which is why we ask for the native file rather than a PDF.

What to send for a financial translation

Send documents in their native format (Excel, Word, PDF from the accounting system), tell us who will read them and by when, and share any glossary, chart of accounts translation or previous year's translated statements so that captions stay consistent year to year. If the translation must be certified for a lender or regulator, or notarized for a Georgian registry, say so at the start.