Diploma Translation

<p>Diplomas travel in two directions, and the work is different each way. A foreign diploma coming into the United States has to be read by an evaluator or a licensing board. A US diploma going abroad usually has to be authenticated before anyone will look at the translation at all.</p>

Foreign diplomas coming into the United States

The readers are credential evaluators such as WES and ECE, state licensing boards, universities, employers, and USCIS in employment-based petitions. All of them are trying to work out what your qualification is worth in US terms, and all of them want the translation to tell them exactly what was awarded - nothing more.

So we translate the qualification as it was conferred. A German Diplom, an Italian laurea magistrale or a Russian specialist degree is rendered as what it is, not as "Master's degree". Deciding equivalence is the evaluator's job, and a translation that has already decided it can undermine the evaluation it was bought for.

A diploma is almost always read together with the transcript, so send both. Many European universities also issue a Diploma Supplement, often already in English; if yours is bilingual it may not need translating at all.

US diplomas going abroad

Most foreign authorities want a US diploma apostilled. The catch is that a diploma from a private university is not a public document, so a state cannot apostille it directly. The usual route is a notarized copy or a notarized statement from the registrar, which the state's apostille authority then authenticates.

That authority differs by state - it is not always the Secretary of State - and the state pages below say which applies. Once the diploma is apostilled, the whole package, apostille included, is translated into the destination language. Some countries require that translation to come from a sworn translator of their own; check before ordering.