Contrary to the belief that autocratic regimes in the Arab world have water-tight documentation systems that account for every minute detail of vital statistics, translating Arabic official documents reveals a state of chaos in the recording of births, deaths, marriages, identifications and other personal data. This article highlights some of the problems and issues encountered by translators of Arabic official documents, namely: inconsistency, illiteracy, non-standardization, ambiguity, incompleteness, and absence of quality standards, procedures and systems for recording official documents and vital statistics.