Certified Translation for WES Credential Evaluation

You paid the evaluation fee, you asked your university to mail the sealed transcript, and then you reached the line in the WES document requirements saying your records must be accompanied by a precise English translation. Nobody mentioned that was a separate thing you had to buy. It is, and the order in which you handle it matters, because an evaluation does not start moving until every piece of the file has arrived.

A credential evaluation and a translation are two different purchases

World Education Services, Educational Credential Evaluators, Josef Silny & Associates and the rest of the evaluator ecosystem do one job: they read your foreign academic record and state what it is equivalent to in the US system — a bachelor's degree, so many semester credits, a converted GPA. They are not translation companies. The evaluation fee does not include translation, and the agency will not translate your documents as part of the service.

So the cost of getting your transcript into English sits on top of what you paid the evaluator, and the translation is on your critical path.

The evaluation clock does not start when you pay the agency. It starts when the last required document lands in your file.

What evaluators mean by a "literal" translation

The phrase that appears over and over in evaluator documentation is word-for-word, sometimes written as "literal" or "precise." Evaluators are extracting specific data points, and they need the English to map onto the original line by line.

A translation prepared for a credential evaluation should:

• Reproduce every course title, in the same order, with nothing merged or summarized
• Carry over grades exactly as written — if the record shows 8/10, a word grade such as Notable, or a grade of excellent (优秀), the English renders that directly rather than guessing at a letter grade
• Keep credit hours, contact hours and academic years in the original numbers and units
• Preserve the layout, so the evaluator can match rows across both documents
• Note seals, stamps and signatures as bracketed descriptions rather than ignoring them
• Leave degree titles untranslated into US equivalents — a bachelor-level Spanish degree (licenciatura) stays a licenciatura

That last point is where well-meaning translations go wrong most often. The entire purpose of the evaluation is for the agency to decide what your credential equals here. If the translation has already declared it a bachelor's degree, the translator has done the evaluator's job, badly, and the file now contains a conclusion nobody asked for. The same applies to grades: do not convert to a 4.0 scale. Render the grade, and render the grading key if the transcript prints one.

Why the translation does not replace the sealed official record

This misunderstanding costs people the most time. Evaluators require that the academic record arrive from the issuing institution — a sealed envelope mailed by the registrar, or verified electronic delivery through an approved channel. The translation accompanies it. It does not substitute for the official document, and it does not have to come from the school.

1. Open your evaluation account and get the reference number the agency assigns you.
2. Request the official documents from your institution, addressed exactly as the agency instructs, with that reference number included.
3. Obtain a complete English translation of the same documents from an independent translator.
4. Submit the translation through the channel the agency specifies — usually uploaded or mailed by you, not by the school.
5. Watch your account until every required item is marked received.

Some institutions issue English transcripts themselves. If yours is authorized to do that and the English version comes through the same official channel, you may not need a separate translation. If the school simply prints an English copy over the counter, check the rules — many agencies will not accept an unofficial English copy in place of the original-language record.

What the certification does, and what you do not need

Evaluators ask for translations from a qualified third party, not from the student. There is no US licensing body for translators, so "qualified" in practice means someone independent of you willing to put their name to the work. That is what a certified translation provides: a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy stating the English is complete and accurate and the translator is competent in the language pair.

If you are fluent in both languages, self-translation looks like an easy saving. The objection is not that you would mistranslate. It is that you have an interest in how your own grades and degree title read in English, and the agency cannot separate your language skill from that interest.

Two things evaluators generally do not require:

• Notarization. A notary verifies the identity of the signer. In most US states a notary is barred from attesting to the accuracy of a translation, so it tells the evaluator nothing about quality.
• An apostille. An apostille authenticates a public document for use in another Hague Convention country. It is issued by a government authority, not a translator, and has no role in a domestic credential evaluation.

Confirm against your agency's current requirements page. WES, ECE and Josef Silny do not word their policies identically.

Pages, price and running the translation in parallel

Translation is priced per page, where a page is up to 250 words including numbers. That matters more for transcripts than for most documents: a dense two-sided academic record can carry more billable words than its physical page count suggests, while a degree certificate with a large seal and six lines of text is comfortably one page.

Certified translation is $24.95 per page, including the signed certificate, formatting that mirrors the original, PDF delivery and revisions. A typical submission is a degree certificate plus a transcript, so most applicants are looking at a handful of pages. The full breakdown is on the pricing page, and you can upload files for an exact count through the quote form without paying anything. Standard translation is the same $24.95 per page — it is not a cheaper tier, it simply omits the certificate, which is the one thing an evaluator wants.

Translation is rarely the slow part: a one- to three-page document is typically delivered within 24 hours, and same-day delivery is available. What takes weeks is the registrar locating the record and mailing it internationally. Run the two in parallel. You need a legible copy, not the sealed original, so scan what you already have and let the English sit ready while the envelope travels.

Avoidable delays worth heading off:

• Missing the back side. Grading scales and credit systems are often printed on the reverse. Send both sides.
• Partial records. If your degree spans two institutions, every record needs translating.
• Name mismatches. A maiden name or a different romanization from your passport should be flagged in advance; a good translator renders what the document says rather than quietly correcting it.

Our diploma and transcript translation page covers formats and turnaround, and if the evaluation is headed to a graduate program that also wants its own copies, the same certified PDF can go to both.

Frequently asked questions