The message is usually a PDF, not a judgment. INPI — the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, which runs the one-stop shop (Guichet unique) — or the greffe (the registry of the commercial court that keeps the registre du commerce et des sociétés, RCS) asks for a “usable” extract of the foreign parent, a board resolution or a certificate of incumbency. The file is in English. Someone has uploaded a Word version. The clerk refuses the piece. The bank, waiting for a Kbis (the official RCS extract), freezes onboarding.
Three bodies of rules collide. Under article R. 123-94 of the Commercial Code the clerk checks, on his own responsibility, that the request is regular; under article R. 123-95 he checks that the statements match the supporting documents. A document he cannot read is a document he cannot match. Service Public still calls the people who stamp a French rendering traducteurs agréés: judicial experts on the lists of the cours d’appel and of the Cour de cassation. In later litigation, by contrast, the commercial chamber held on 27 November 2024 that a trial judge who understands English may rely on untranslated emails. That is a relief in a shareholders’ dispute. It is not a licence to file an English pack at the greffe of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris.
This article is for the foreign founder whose file is stuck on language. It is not a general guide to setting up a French company as a foreign founder, and it is not the same problem as a rejected registered office. The question is narrower: which foreign documents need a sworn translation, who may stamp it, what to do when INPI or the greffe still says no, and what changes if the same English emails later land in front of a judge.
I. When does a French company filing actually require a sworn translation of foreign documents?
A. What INPI and the greffe are checking, and why a simple English pack is not a court exhibit
A French SAS (société par actions simplifiée) can be formed by one or more persons who bear losses only up to their contribution. Article L. 227-1 of the Commercial Code says so in terms: “Une société par actions simplifiée peut être instituée par une ou plusieurs personnes qui ne supportent les pertes qu’à concurrence de leur apport.” The sole shareholder may be a foreign company. That is ordinary. What is not ordinary, for a clerk in Paris or Nanterre, is a bundle of PDFs issued by a foreign registry, in a language the file does not speak, with no chain between the person who signed the French subscription form and the organ that had authority to bind the parent.
The French company’s own articles are a written contract. Article 1835 of the Civil Code is blunt: “Les statuts doivent être établis par écrit. Ils déterminent, outre les apports de chaque associé, la forme, l’objet, l’appellation, le siège social, le capital social, la durée de la société et les modalités de son fonctionnement.” Until the company is registered it has no legal personality. Article 1842 of the Civil Code states that companies other than silent partnerships and the special free partnerships of the Monetary and Financial Code “jouissent de la personnalité morale à compter de leur immatriculation.” The deposit that produces that personality is made at the greffe of the court of the registered office, today through the Guichet unique. Article R. 123-102 of the Commercial Code locates the annex filing “au greffe du tribunal dans le ressort duquel est situé le siège social.” If the piece is a copy, “celle-ci est certifiée conforme par le représentant légal ou par toute personne habilitée par les textes régissant la forme de société en cause à effectuer cette certification.” Certification of a copy by the président of the French SAS is not a translation of the parent’s Delaware certificate. Mixing the two is how files die.
The clerk’s job is documentary, not literary. Article R. 123-94 provides: “Le greffier, sous sa responsabilité, s’assure de la régularité de la demande.” Article R. 123-95 then tells him what to verify: “Il vérifie que les énonciations sont conformes aux dispositions législatives et réglementaires, correspondent aux pièces justificatives et actes déposés en annexe et sont compatibles, dans le cas d’une demande de modification ou de radiation, avec l’état du dossier.” He also checks that the constitution or the statutory amendments of a commercial company comply with the rules that govern them, and that the individual required to register — or, for a legal person, its legal representative — is not on the national disqualification file of article L. 128-1. None of that can be done on an English certificate whose stamps, dates and corporate name the clerk cannot map onto the French form. The Commercial Code does not, in those two articles, use the words traducteur assermenté. The practical consequence is the same: a supporting document that cannot be read cannot “correspond” to the statements in the request.
Service Public, updated on 26 January 2026, draws the line that founders keep missing. A traducteur agréé is a judicial expert entered on the lists drawn up by the cours d’appel and the Cour de cassation. The online finder is the Service Public page “Trouver un expert agréé ou un traducteur agréé”. For certain public documents issued in another EU Member State, Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 lets the holder produce the document with a multilingual standard form and without a translation. Service Public is explicit that the receiving authority may still ask for a translation “si nécessaire”, and that in that case “la traduction doit être faite par un traducteur agréé.” Company extracts and board minutes of a US LLC, a UK Ltd after Brexit, a Dubai free-zone entity or a Swiss AG are not that EU civil-status pack. Treating a Google translation as if it were the multilingual form is how a complementary request is born.
Two further distinctions keep the file honest. First, an apostille under the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 authenticates the origin of a public document. It does not translate it. A New York apostille on a county clerk’s certificate tells the French greffe that the signature is genuine; it does not tell him what the certificate says. Second, the certification of a copy under article R. 123-102 is a statement by a person who has authority under the company’s own law that the photocopy matches the original. It is not a statement that the French text is a faithful rendering of the English. A founder who uploads “certified translation” produced by an in-house lawyer in London has produced neither an apostille nor a court-appointed translation. The greffe is not being difficult. It is being unable to perform R. 123-95.
The French company’s own statutes should be executed in a French original that can be deposited. Some incorporation platforms tell readers that the Toubon law of 4 August 1994 makes French compulsory for every clause; the safe operational rule is simpler and does not depend on stretching a consumer-language statute: the instrument that will sit in the RCS annex and that the clerk must check for statutory compliance has to be a French text the clerk can read. A convenience translation for the US board can travel with it. The convenience translation is not the articles. The same split applies to minutes of the foreign parent: the parent’s board resolution remains an English corporate act; what the Guichet unique needs is a French rendering that a traducteur agréé will stamp, plus proof of the signatory’s authority.
Which documents typically trigger the request, in the order the clerk actually uses them? The current extract of the foreign register (Companies House, Delaware Division of Corporations, commercial register of the parent’s seat), dated and complete, not a screenshot of a website. The articles or bylaws of the parent, if they are invoked to show who may subscribe or who may appoint a permanent representative. The resolution or incumbency certificate naming the individual who will sign the French subscription, the French articles, or the Guichet unique power of attorney. Identity documents of that individual, if they are not already in French or in an EU multilingual format. For a later modification — a change of président from abroad, a new shareholder, an update of beneficial owners — the same pack comes back. The Kbis of the French company, once issued, is itself a French public document; when a foreign bank or a foreign court asks for it, the problem inverts and a sworn translation of the Kbis into English may be required at the other end. That inversion is not the subject of the complementary request you have on your desk.
Until registration, nothing in that pack binds third parties as a French company. After registration, unpublished facts cannot be set up against third parties. Article L. 123-9 of the Commercial Code states: “La personne assujettie à immatriculation ne peut, dans l’exercice de son activité, opposer ni aux tiers ni aux administrations publiques, qui peuvent toutefois s’en prévaloir, les faits et actes sujets à mention que si ces derniers ont été publiés au registre.” A translation dispute that delays the filing is therefore not cosmetic. It delays the moment from which the French SAS can oppose its existence, its président and its capital to a bank, a landlord or a tax office. Article L. 210-5 adds a BODACC overlay for SARL and joint-stock companies: operations before the sixteenth day of publication in the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales are not enforceable against a third party who proves that he could not have known of them. Language is the bottleneck of that publicity, not a side issue.
B. How to instruct a traducteur agréé on the Cour d’appel list, and how that list is not a CESEDA interpreter list
Service Public’s 26 January 2026 fiche is the right starting point because it names the profession correctly. In everyday English the stamp is called a “sworn translation”. In French administrative language the translator is an expert judiciaire entered on a court list. You may pick a translator on the national list of the Cour de cassation or on a list of a cour d’appel; a person on the national list also appears on the list of the appeal court to which he belongs. For a Paris-registered SAS, the list of the Cour d’appel de Paris is the list the greffe sees every week. Nothing in the Commercial Code forces you to use a Paris translator for a Paris company, but a stamp and a header that a Paris clerk recognises shortens the complementary request. The finder is the Service Public tool that searches those lists by language and by court.
The Cour de cassation has spent years telling appeal-court assemblies that those lists are not interchangeable with the separate list of interpreters and translators kept for immigration procedure. In 2e Civ., 28 May 2026, n° 25-60.232, the second civil chamber quashed a refusal of the general assembly of the Cour d’appel de Bastia which had treated a candidate already on a CESEDA interpreter list in Paris as barred from the judicial-expert list in Bastia. The court quoted article 5, paragraph 2, of décret n° 2004-1463 of 23 December 2004 and held: “Aux termes de ce texte, aucune personne physique ou morale ne peut être inscrite sur plusieurs listes de cour d’appel.” It then distinguished the two lists: “l’article L. 141-3 du code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile prévoit l’établissement d’une liste d’interprètes traducteurs distincte de la liste des experts judiciaires.” The consequence, in the court’s own words, is that “l’interdiction du cumul d’inscription sur les listes de plusieurs cours d’appel ne concerne pas la liste des interprètes traducteurs prévue par le code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile.” A founder who hires an immigration interpreter because the person “does translations for the préfecture” has not hired a traducteur agréé for an RCS file. The stamp will not match what the greffe expects, and the 2026 decision is the reason: the lists are legally distinct.
The same chamber had already described, in 2021, the two products that the market actually sells. A translator had billed a “non-sworn” version and then a supplement for the stamp. On a first round, the Cour de cassation had held that two invoices for two different services — “une traduction libre et une traduction certifiée” — and different prices for different services were not in themselves contrary to honour and integrity (2e Civ., 6 June 2019, pourvoi n° 19-60.065, restated in 2e Civ., 17 June 2021, n° 20-60.054). The 2021 decision then annulled a second refusal that had recycled the same facts under a new wording about “apposer le tampon et les mentions prescrites pour la traduction assermentée.” For the foreign founder the lesson is operational, not disciplinary. A traduction libre and a traduction certifiée are two different performances. The first is useful for the board in New York. The second is the one that carries the stamp and the prescribed mentions. Asking the same person to “just add the stamp” on a free translation, without a fresh reading of the original, is exactly the shortcut that produced the complaint in that case. Instruct the translator to work from the original extract, to reproduce stamps, seals, margins and handwritten additions, to keep proper names untranslated unless a French usage is already established, and to issue a single stamped instrument that annexes a copy of the source.
The instruction letter should name the destination: Guichet unique / greffe of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris, or of Nanterre, Bobigny or Créteil if the registered office is in those inner suburbs. It should name the language pair (English-French, German-French, Arabic-French) and the document type (certificate of incorporation, articles, incumbency, power of attorney). It should attach the original PDF, not a retyped version. It should ask for the translator’s list number, the cour d’appel of inscription, and a scan good enough for an INPI upload. If the document was issued outside the EU, the apostille or, for a non-Hague State, the consular legalisation belongs on the original before the translator starts; translating an unauthenticated photocopy merely produces a beautiful rendering of an unproven paper. If the signatory of the French articles will sign from abroad, a power of attorney for the Guichet unique is a separate instrument and usually needs the same treatment: authentic form at the place of signature, then translation of that form.
The judicial expert is a technician. Article 232 of the Code of Civil Procedure says the judge may appoint “toute personne de son choix pour l’éclairer par des constatations, par une consultation ou par une expertise sur une question de fait qui requiert les lumières d’un technicien.” Article 233 adds that the technician “doit remplir personnellement la mission qui lui est confiée.” Those articles govern a court-ordered expert report, not an RCS filing. They still explain why the stamp matters: the person who signs is supposed to have performed the work personally. A translation agency that puts a generic letterhead on a junior linguist’s draft, without a list number, is not that person. For a Paris file, ask for the translator’s inscription on the Cour d’appel de Paris or on the national list, in the H.02 language code that matches the source language. If the only available listed translator for a rare language sits in another court of appeal, that is still a listed expert; it is not a CESEDA interpreter, and after the 28 May 2026 decision no one should confuse the two.
Cost and time are not in the Code, but they decide whether the French company exists this month. A short Companies House extract is a few pages; a full LLC operating agreement is not. Build the calendar backwards from the bank’s KYC deadline and from any lease that was signed “subject to Kbis”. The French SAS does not exist toward third parties before immatriculation. Every day spent arguing with a clerk about a free translation is a day without a Kbis, without a corporate IBAN, and without a VAT number that the tax office will treat as live. That is the price of treating language as a clerical afterthought.
II. The file is already rejected, the bank wants a French pack, or a judge is reading English emails: how to regularise and contest
A. Rebuilding the INPI or greffe file, and using the RCS judge if the clerk still refuses
A complementary request from the Guichet unique is not a judgment. It is the clerk, through INPI, telling you that R. 123-94 and R. 123-95 cannot be performed on the pack you uploaded. Read it as a list of mismatches, not as an insult. Typical mismatches are: the parent’s extract is older than the greffe will accept; the corporate name on the English extract does not match the name typed in the French form (Inc. versus LLC, trading name versus legal name, missing “Limited”); the person who signed the French articles does not appear on the foreign extract or on a translated resolution; the translation is unsigned, unstamped, or stamped by a person who is not on a court list; a copy was “certified” by the French président who has never seen the original; the apostille is missing for a non-EU public document. Answer each mismatch with a document, not with a paragraph of explanations in English.
The rebuild sequence that actually reopens a Paris file is boring and it works. First, obtain a fresh official extract of the foreign parent from the issuing registry, not from a data vendor. Second, apostille or legalise it if it is a public document from outside the EU multilingual-form system. Third, send the original (or a colour scan of the apostilled original) to a traducteur agréé on a cour d’appel list, with written instructions that the destination is the greffe. Fourth, have the parent issue a short resolution, in its own language, that names the individual, the French company, and the exact acts authorised (subscribe, sign articles, sign the Guichet unique power). Fifth, translate that resolution the same way. Sixth, upload the French original of the SAS articles, the stamped translations, and the apostilled sources as separate attachments, labelled so that a clerk who opens ten PDFs in a row can see the pair “source / traduction”. Seventh, if the registered office is in Paris or in the inner suburbs, say so in the cover note: Tribunal de commerce de Paris, or the commercial court of Nanterre, Bobigny or Créteil, so that the file is not bounced on venue. Eighth, keep the INPI message thread; the next clerk will not have the first clerk’s memory.
If the clerk still refuses, the dispute is no longer a translation argument. It is a contestation with the greffier. Article L. 123-6 of the Commercial Code places the RCS “tenu par le greffier de chaque tribunal de commerce, sous la surveillance du président ou d’un juge commis à cet effet, qui sont compétents pour toutes contestations entre l’assujetti et le greffier ainsi que pour tous recours exercés contre une décision, même implicite, du greffier.” Article R. 123-139 adds, subject to special radiation procedures: “toute contestation entre la personne tenue à l’immatriculation et le greffier est portée devant le juge commis à la surveillance du registre, qui statue par ordonnance.” That juge commis is the RCS judge of the commercial court of the seat. In Paris it is a judge of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris; in the inner suburbs it is the equivalent judge at Nanterre, Bobigny or Créteil. The application is not a full commercial claim. It is a request that the judge order the clerk to register, or say why the remaining objection is well founded. Attach the complementary request, the stamped translations, the apostilles, and a one-page table matching each French statement to a pièce. Do not attach a lecture on Villers-Cotterêts. The judge is supervising a register, not retrying a linguistic theory.
The ordinance is notified. Article R. 123-140 requires notification to the person subject to registration by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, indicating the form and time limit of the appeal. Article R. 123-141 then sends the appeal onto the cour d’appel “comme en matière gracieuse selon les dispositions des articles 950 à 953 du code de procédure civile.” The useful sentence for a foreign founder is the next one: “Toutefois, la partie est dispensée du ministère d’avocat.” You may appeal without a member of the cour d’appel bar. That is not an invitation to appeal unprepared. It is a reminder that the Code itself treats this as a supervisory dispute, not as ordinary contentious litigation. The greffier of the cour d’appel sends a copy of the arrêt back to the greffier who keeps the register. If you win, the file is supposed to move. If you lose, the remaining path is a further appeal on points of law, which is a different case and a different calendar.
Silence of the clerk can be a decision. Article L. 123-6 speaks of a decision “même implicite”. A complementary request that never closes, or a Guichet unique file that stays “pending documents” after you have uploaded the stamped pack, is not a void. It is a situation in which the RCS judge can be asked to hold that the clerk has refused. Date every upload. Download the INPI acknowledgements. If the registered office is a domiciliation address in Paris, say so: some clerks are stricter on foreign-language packs when they already have doubts about the seat. That is a different fight, already mapped in the registered-office rejection article; do not let the clerk mix a seat objection into a language objection without answering each on its own ground.
The bank is not the greffe, but it copies the greffe’s reflexes. A compliance officer in a French bank who cannot read the parent’s extract will not finish KYC, even if the Kbis later issues. Send the bank the same stamped pack, not a different convenience translation. If beneficial-owner filing is the real blocker, that is the RBE file, not the translation file; the two are often raised in the same email and they are not the same remedy. A blocked RBE is a beneficial-owner declaration. A blocked translation is a supporting document the clerk cannot check. Solve the one the complementary request actually names.
Île-de-France practice has a local texture. The Tribunal de commerce de Paris sees more English packs than a provincial greffe and is not, for that reason, more lenient: it is more used to seeing a listed translator’s stamp and more used to rejecting a Word file titled “Translation_final_v3”. Nanterre, which hears many western-Hauts-de-Seine holding companies, is equally used to Luxembourg and Delaware extracts. Bobigny and Créteil see logistics and warehouse companies whose parents sit in Germany or the Netherlands; EU multilingual forms help for some public documents and do nothing for a GmbH shareholders’ resolution. In all four courts the juge commis is the person named by L. 123-6. The Cour d’appel de Paris is the appeal court for the Paris ordinance and, for listed translators, the court whose list is the default search. A founder sitting in London does not need to fly in to sign a translation. He does need a French original of the articles, a listed translator, and a file that a clerk in those buildings can open on a Monday morning.
B. English documents in a later dispute: what the Cour de cassation actually allows a judge to do
The complementary request trains foreign counsel to believe that every English page is worthless in France without a stamp. That is false in litigation, and mixing the two regimes produces the opposite error: a founder who skipped the stamp at the greffe because “judges can read English”. The commercial chamber drew the line on 27 November 2024. Shareholders of a French SAS had argued that an appeal court could not rely on English emails without a French translation, invoking article 111 of the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 25 August 1539 and article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Cour de cassation rejected the argument. In Com., 27 November 2024, n° 23-10.433 it held: “l’ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts ne concerne que les actes de procédure et le juge, sans violer l’article 6 de la Convention de sauvegarde des droits de l’homme et des libertés fondamentales, est fondé, dans l’exercice de son pouvoir souverain d’appréciation, à retenir comme élément de preuve un document écrit dans une langue étrangère lorsqu’il en comprend le sens.” It added: “La cour d’appel a donc pu retenir comme probants les courriels invoqués par la cinquième branche bien qu’ils aient été produits dans leur version originale en langue anglaise sans être accompagnés d’une traduction en français.”
That holding has a precise scope. Procedural acts — the summons, the submissions, the judgment — remain in French. Villers-Cotterêts, the court said, “ne concerne que les actes de procédure.” Exhibits are different. A trial judge who understands the language may keep the English email. A trial judge who does not understand it may set it aside, including of his own motion. Article 23 of the Code of Civil Procedure is the hearing counterpart of the same idea: “Le juge n’est pas tenu de recourir à un interprète lorsqu’il connaît la langue dans laquelle s’expriment les parties.” None of that helps you at the greffe. The greffier is not a trial judge exercising sovereign assessment of evidence. He is a public officer who must, under R. 123-95, match statements to supporting documents. If he does not read the language, the match fails. Quoting the 2024 arrêt in an INPI comment box is a category error.
The 2024 decision is, however, the right authority once the company exists and the dispute has moved to a commercial court: a share-sale fight, a claim that the foreign parent never authorised the subscription, a debate on what an English side letter meant. Village-Justice and other professional notes have discussed the same line for years, usually from the point of view of a litigant who wants to put medical or commercial records in front of a French judge without paying a sworn translator for every page. That literature does not speak to the Guichet unique. LegalPlace’s statutes guide, for its part, tells readers that French articles must be in French and that a convenience translation for foreign shareholders has no legal value as the articles; CaptainContrat’s foreign-director guide is about residence permits, not about stamps on a Delaware extract. The gap between those pages is the gap this file falls into: the parent’s documents, not the French articles, and the clerk, not the trial judge.
What should you translate for a later commercial case in Paris, if the 2024 arrêt lets the judge read English? Translate the documents you cannot afford to have set aside: the articles, the share-transfer instrument if it is in English, the parent resolution that is the very authority in dispute, any notice whose date starts a time limit. Leave in English the emails whose meaning is obvious to a bilingual bench, and be ready to produce a translation overnight if the judge asks. Do not build a case that exists only in untranslated annexes and then complain that the court “ignored” them. Sovereign assessment includes the power to ignore what the court cannot read. The 2024 arrêt is a shield against an automatic exclusion argument. It is not a duty on the court to decode your data room.
Criminal procedure is another country. A defendant who does not understand French has a right to translation of essential documents of the case; that line of case law from the criminal chamber is not a rule for the RCS and it is not a rule for a SAS shareholders’ dispute. Do not cite it to a greffier. Do not cite it to a commercial judge as if it reversed Com. 23-10.433. The useful criminal-adjacent point for this article is only the one the second civil chamber made in 2026: the CESEDA interpreter list is not the judicial-expert list. Hiring the wrong list is a filing defect, not a human-rights argument.
If the underlying problem is not language at all — the foreign company cannot own 100 per cent because a regulated activity requires a French authorisation, or the beneficial-owner chain is incomplete, or the registered office is a letterbox the clerk will not accept — fix that problem on its own ground. Language is the issue only where the clerk’s R. 123-95 check is the check that failed. A well-stamped translation of a document that does not confer authority will still fail R. 123-95, because the statements will not “correspond” to the pieces. The stamp authenticates the rendering. It does not create a power that the parent’s own law never gave.
Conclusion
A French SAS exists, toward third parties, when it is registered. Articles 1842 of the Civil Code and L. 123-1 of the Commercial Code are not waiting for a perfect English narrative. They are waiting for a file the greffier can check. R. 123-94 and R. 123-95 make that check the clerk’s personal responsibility. A listed translator’s stamp is how a foreign extract becomes a pièce the clerk can match to the form. A CESEDA interpreter’s stamp is not, as the Cour de cassation recalled on 28 May 2026 when it separated those lists. A free in-house translation is a board paper, not an RCS paper, as the same court’s 2019 and 2021 decisions on traduction libre and traduction certifiée already treated as two performances.
If INPI or the greffe has already said no, rebuild the pack: fresh extract, apostille where it applies, listed translator, resolution of authority, French original of the articles, clean upload. If the clerk still refuses, L. 123-6 and R. 123-139 send you to the RCS judge of the court of the seat, with an appeal under R. 123-141 that does not require a cour d’appel avocat. If the same English emails later appear in a shareholders’ dispute, Com. 23-10.433 of 27 November 2024 allows a judge who understands them to keep them. That arrêt is not a substitute for the stamp at the greffe of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris. The founder who treats those two rooms as one room is the founder whose Kbis is still pending while the lease, the bank and the first hire have already started to run.
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