I knew a few Irish their BC was written out in pencil & that passed the mustard !
Excellent! To expand on the subject of French bureaucracy, we all know only too well how their requirements can vary from day to day, and from one fonctionaire to another, but the one thing they all love is a formal government-issued document. Iāve used a UK driving licence to prove my identity when other options (eg Carte Vitale) failed to impress. Good news for your wife, she had the essential bit of government plastic, the true sine qua non to a bureaucrat.
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My South African wife (not to be confused with all my other wives of other nationalities) applied to Pretoria for a copy of her birth certificate three years ago. It arrived last month. I wonāt bore you with an account of the correspondence in-between.
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I hear you. One of my close friends has been trying to track down paperwork from SA to apply for nationality here. The delays have been mind boggling.
Itās around 5 years now that Iāve been trying to get a copy of my Dadās birth certificate from Zimbabweā¦
I think youāve hit the nail on the head! Itās very unlikely a Zambian I D has popped up very often at the CPAM office in St Hilaire de HarcouĆ«t. Quite Ć catch ! And the cachet that goes with approving it! Exotique! 
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Agree, we never needed a translation or multilingual version for CPAM
We did our own translations way back when in simpler times (made them look smart thoā) and accepted without a murmur. But now itās all centralised perhaps things have changed?
Itās other things more recently where more formal stuff has been demanded, and the multi language version rejected.
Not gov.co.uk, should be Ā£11 from https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate
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Itās much quicker to contact your local office i.e. the town/area you were born in. Look on your local council site. Iām still waiting for a copy birth certificate from April from main government records office.They keep moving the date itās going to be posted. Once the local office opened after Covid shutdown, I applied to my local birth area and got it in less than a week.
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Thank you for the tip!
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I did just this and made the purchase at the same time. I was going to the UK at that time so popped into the registry office and picked it up.
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That made me smile as the registrar on my birth certificate was called Ivy Alabaster 
