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A notary public is an officer who can administer oaths and statutory declarations, witness and authenticate documents and perform certain other acts depending on the jurisdiction.
With the exception of Louisiana, whose private law is based on civil law rather than common law, a notary public in the United States of America has powers that are far more limited than the role of a civil law notary in the rest of the world. There are far more notaries in the United States than in other countries (4.5 million[1] , compared with 900 in England and Wales). For the purposes of authentication, most countries require commercial or personal documents which originate from or are signed in another country to be notarized before they can be used or officially recorded or before they can have any legal effect. This includes the translation of such documents done by an expert translator approved by a governmental entity.
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