The queue was held up for a good 30 minutes while the woman tried to communicate to the bank official that she had the necessary documents, but they were in Swedish. Two problems were immediately apparent: the official's English was poor and there was no way he was going to accept the documents until they were translated into Bulgarian.

The woman eventually left with desperation written all over her face.

Bulgaria can be a difficult country to handle on an everyday level. It requires nerve, flexibility and the abilities of a mime artiste if you want to communicate without knowing the language. This may work in the shop or the pub, but not when it comes to the written word or an important business meeting.

Fear not – good translation agencies aren't that hard to find, especially in the bigger cities. And no matter where you live, you can still take advantage of agencies that do translations through the Internet. Even if you want a less common language like Finnish or Portuguese, there is a variety of services at your disposal.

One way to ensure you make a good choice is to go on the recommendations of friends who have already used a particular agency. Most agencies can handle whatever you need, be it interpretation or translation of official documents, business correspondence or technical information.

The documentation problem is especially troublesome if you need to present a Bulgarian document outside the country. Official documents must be authenticated, or else they are not valid. For example, birth or marriage certificates need a stamp and a signature from the city council, while medical documents are verified by the Ministry of Health. Your next stop is the Consular Department of the Foreign Ministry, which legalises the translation of your document.

Look for an agency with a lot of experience and a team of translators who can translate to and from at least several languages. A good example is TranslationBG, whose owner, Vanya Mihaylova, is a translator of German with 34 years of experience. Her company has been translating all kinds of literature for 20 years. Here you can have technical documentation, fiction and personal or business letters translated, or get interpretation services when you have foreign visitors or business negotiations.

In Content Translations, an internationally recognised company with experienced translators, you can choose any combination of European languages – even if you need translation of specialised literature such as software legalisation, product catalogues, or legal, financial or accounting documents.

Whenever you need a trusted partner, you can put confidentiality in the hands of the Parola Plus agency. Apart from managing the translation of whole projects' documentation in the fields of property, insurance, advertising or energy efficiency, the agency also works with delicate business information and has gained the trust of many corporate clients. The professional staff handles documents as well as web sites, no matter how difficult the terminology.