Penelope’s Quest For The Family Book: Phail #4

Failure. Again.

You remember that, just to be sure, I had sent a scan of Penelope’s documents for the Swiss Family Grimoire to Satan? Well, good that I did. Here is the reply.

Hello darling, nice to hear your screams of agony again :-)

You did some nice homework there. It’s a pity that the notary stamp is missing from the page in Chinese of the original birth certificate.

Try again, you’ll be luckier!

Before I start ranting and cursing I think it’s better that I explain what this means. First of all, remember that we prepared (but not sent yet) two different documents for this fucking family booklet. Penelope’s household registration transcript is OK, the problem is with the birth certificate. This 1-page document, stamped by Taileng’s Household Registration Office, comes in Chinese only. The first thing we did is, we brought it to a sworn translator (as from instructions we received from the Zivilstandsamt Zerneve). The translator created a second 1-page document, and then attached it to the first page with a special signed and stamped seal. This makes the two pages basically joined into a single document, they cannot be separated without clearly and visibly invalidating the translator’s seal.

Then we brought this document to a public notary in Taileng. The notary added a stamp and signature which basically say “I have verified the authenticity of this”. But here be dragons: the notary only puts ONE stamp, on the SECOND sheet, the one with the English translation. This means: “I have verified that the TRANSLATOR’S SEAL is authentic, i.e., it belongs to this person who is in the official translators’ registry”. It does NOT mean “I have verified that the Chinese birth certificate is authentic, i.e. it comes from Taileng’s Household Registration Office”.

Then we took this legalized document and brought it to a MOFA office for double-legalization. MOFA’s legalization is a bit different: they create a THIRD sheet of paper, and they attach it (with another stamped and signed seal) to the two-page document; this creates a single, 3-page document. MOFA’s legalization page (on the front) says “I have verified the signature and stamp OF THE NOTARY in the attached document, and I can attest that they indeed belong to this notary that is registered with us”. It does not say anything about the translator’s seal, because the translator is not necessarily registered at MOFA. And it does not need to, because the translator was verified by the notary.

But apparently, AYFKM, this is not enough for Satan. Because, AYFKM, “new rules to increase the authenticity of documents” which, AYFKM, where NOT mentioned in the letter we received from Zivilstandsamt Zerneve, require that ALSO the AYFKM original Chinese birth certificate must be AYFKM notarized, not only its AYFKM translation.

First of all it has to be clarified that NOTHING of what is written here was ever explained to us, we had to figure out this by ourselves. The problem is: Satan needs TWO statements: a) this Chinese document is authentic; and b) this English translation is accurate. And, in what we did, we only proved the second. One would imagine that, in a sane world, the sworn translator also verifies the authenticity of a document. Unfortunately, the world is a vampire. Basically, the problem with Satan is that in theory we could have cheated in the following way:

1. Forge a fake birth certificate in Chinese.
2. Stamp it and sign it with a fake seal that looks like the one from the Household Registration Office.
3. Have this translated by the sworn translator. Since he does NOT check the authenticity of the seal, but only translates the content, the forgery would have gone unnoticed.
4. Have it legalized by the notary, who, again, does NOT check the authenticity of the Chinese document, but only of the translator’s seal.
5. Have it double-legalized by the MOFA, which ONLY authenticates the notary’s seal.

This is a funny situation. How do we fix that? We contacted the notary, and she made clear that, whatever we do, it is absolutely not possible to modify in any way a document after this gets legalized by MOFA, it would be equivalent to an act of forgery, thereby super-illegal. So we cannot, e.g., bring back the document to the notary and ask to add another stamp on the Chinese sheet.

In any case it looks like WE’RE DOOMED, and we have to ask AGAIN a favor to Mei-Lin’s relatives or friends, because this is stuff that must be done from Taiwan. After thinking for a while, we came out with three possible strategies:

1. Repeat the process starting from scratch, just this time ask the notary to stamp the page in Chinese rather than the translation. This looks an unlikely solution, as it would prove the authenticity of the document, but not the accuracy of the translation.
2. Request a new birth certificate, have it double-legalized by notary and MOFA, and THEN add the translation. This looks VERY unlikely, as not only would it have the same problem of the first solution above, but it would also be super-illegal as explained by the notary.
3. Request a new birth certificate, have it translated, and then ask the notary to stamp BOTH pages before having it double-legalized by the MOFA.

The last one sounds the most reasonable approach to me. Since it’s reasonable, it’s also probably wrong. MOFA’s legalization attests the authenticity of ONE signature/stamp, so what if we have two on the same document? We need to verify this with Satan.

I wrote a slightly upset email to Satan with the three options above. Here is the reply.

Please calm down and don’t panic. Just provide another legalized birth certificate in Chinese.

I FUCKING KID YOU NOT, that was basically the reply. Not only DON’T PANIC but also an unparsable one-line solution, probably written while taking a shit during a break.

First of all I decided to call the Zivilstandsamt Zerneve to complain officially about Satan’s ineptitude. The answer is basically: “Sorry, they’re more powerful than us”. Then it’s time to talk with Satan. The problem is that Satan only answers the phone from 9:00 to 12:00 Taiwan time. But, funnily enough, on Satan’s email signature it is also listed a Swiss phone number. So I decide to try and call early in the morning (Taiwan early afternoon) and, surprise surprise, a nice English-speaking hag lady answers at the phone.

Oh, dear Mr. Fantasia, nice talking with you! I hope you did not get upset by the situation and keep your calm.

I am biting a leather strap and destroying a rubber ball with my hands. Sure, I keep calm, that’s what I do. Here is the solution proposed by Satan:

1. Do not trash the document we have prepared, send it to them as it is.
2. However, also request a SECOND Chinese birth certificate, same as the first one.
3. Double-legalize this second certificate by notary and MOFA, without translation.
4. Send this as well.
5. Satan will attest that the two Chinese documents (the one with the translation legalized, and the one legalized directly) match one-to-one in content.

This solution is somewhat surprising to me, because I had never imagined that Satan would do anything more than verifying MOFA’s seal, but apparently they have enough neurons to check whether two sheets of paper have the same Chinese characters in the same order, which is probably more than I could do anyway.

So this is what we’re going to do then! Stay tuned for the next, exciting chapter of the Swiss Family Fucking Gigacursed Grimoire Saga!