You Handle the Move. We'll Handle the Country.

PCS’d to Germany, Japan, Italy, or Korea? Somewhere between the welcome brief and month eight, OCONUS life turns into a second full-time job — one conducted entirely in a language you don’t speak.

Taika is the bilingual in-country agent for military families. We read the letters, call the landlord, dispute the Nebenkosten, sit beside you at the appointment, and untangle the host-nation paperwork — so you can take care of your family instead of the bureaucracy. We’re veteran-owned and have done this work globally since 2009 (102,000+ projects, 300+ languages, 5.0★).

We respect the resources you already have

MilTax, JAG, and Military OneSource are excellent — and free. Use them. We handle what they don’t: the host-country, local-language side of daily life. When a question needs a licensed tax pro or attorney, we coordinate and translate while a vetted professional does the licensed work.

You handle the move. We’ll handle the country. Get a free situation call at the Service Family Rate.

The load nobody briefs you on

The assignment is your spouse’s. The administration is yours.

Registering at the address. The bank. The utilities. Health insurance enrolment. A driving licence. The children’s school. A medical appointment. The letter that arrived in a language nobody in the house reads, with what appears to be a deadline.

Individually small. Collectively, the reason an overseas assignment feels harder than anyone said it would — and all of it is the same problem: local language plus local process, with no local network yet.

Employment: confirm your position before you invest effort

Whether a spouse may work on the local economy depends on the country agreement and your sponsorship. In some locations local employment is restricted, requires permission, or triggers local tax and registration consequences.

That is genuinely worth establishing before spending three months on a job search. Your installation legal assistance office is the authority.

Once you know where you stand, the language side is where help matters:

• Adapting a CV to local convention — which differs substantially from U.S. résumé norms in length, content, and what is expected on it.
• Translating credentials, transcripts and licences into the form the local employer or authority accepts.
• Correspondence and interviews handled in the local language.

The licence problem, stated honestly

If you hold a professional licence — nursing, teaching, counselling, cosmetology, real estate, law — an overseas assignment is harder than a domestic one, and it is worth being clear about why.

Interstate portability arrangements and licence compacts are U.S. mechanisms. They do not reach a foreign jurisdiction. A foreign licensing body applies its own recognition process, which typically means:

• Translated academic and licensing documents — often by a locally sworn translator rather than a U.S. certified one.
• Sometimes a credential evaluation.
• Frequently local examination, and occasionally local supervised practice.

We can prepare the documents to the required standard. Recognition itself is the foreign body’s decision, and nobody should promise you otherwise. See academic and credential translation and bureaucracy help abroad.

School: get the records translated before the meeting

Enrolment usually needs birth certificates, immunisation records, prior school records and transcripts, and proof of address — translated into the form that specific school or authority accepts. Ask first; many require a locally sworn translation.

Then there is grade equivalence, which is a separate conversation and one worth having before enrolment. Systems abroad divide years differently, and a placement you did not expect is much harder to change afterwards than to discuss in advance.

Order what you need: certified birth certificate translation, immunization record translation, and school diploma and transcript translation.

Do not let your child interpret the meeting about your child

School meetings abroad carry their own vocabulary — assessment categories, support arrangements, discipline procedure, grade equivalence — and the decisions made in them affect a child for years.

Bring a professional interpreter, in person or by video, so you are participating rather than nodding. And specifically do not use your own child as the interpreter: they lack the vocabulary, they are placed in an impossible position, and they will filter what they think will upset you. It is the practice educators and clinicians warn about most consistently.

If your child needs additional educational support, all of this matters more rather than less. Support systems abroad are structured differently from U.S. special-education processes, the terminology does not map cleanly, and U.S. school documentation generally has to be translated before it can even be considered.

Veteran-owned, with a service-family rate

Taika is a veteran-owned small business operating since 2009 — 300+ languages, 24/7 support, 5.0★ on Google — and there is a service-family rate.

The Handled Guarantee: a named contact, a plain-English plan within one business day, and follow-through until it is done. Part of the Taika OCONUS Network.

Get a free quote, or see support for active duty and DoD civilians, an interpreter for appointments abroad, housing help abroad, and country-by-country support.