Do Universities Accept Certified Translations?

You have a transcript in Portuguese, a diploma in Arabic, or a secondary school leaving certificate in Russian, and the application portal is asking for "official English translations." Somewhere else on the same website, the university mentions a credential evaluation from WES or ECE. A third page says documents must come "directly from the issuing institution." None of these say the same thing, and it is not obvious whether you need one of them, two of them, or all three. The short answer is that universities do accept certified translations — the longer answer is that the admissions office and the credential evaluator are two different readers with two different jobs, and the paperwork they want reflects that.

What the admissions office is actually checking

An admissions reader is not verifying your education. They are building a file they can evaluate. For a foreign-language document, that means they need to know two things: what the document says in English, and that the English version was not edited in your favor.

That is the entire function of a certified translation. It is a complete, word-for-word English rendering of the source document, accompanied by a signed statement — a Certificate of Translation Accuracy — in which the translator attests that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from that language into English. There is no national license behind it, no government seal, no registry. The certification is a signed representation by an identifiable person or company.

Admissions offices accept this because it solves their problem. They can read your coursework, see your grades on the original scale, and point to a name if anything looks wrong. What they will not accept, almost universally, is a translation you prepared yourself or one prepared by a parent, spouse or sibling — not because your English is inadequate, but because the certification is meaningless when the signer benefits from the content.

The issue is never whether you can translate the document. It is whether anyone should take your word for it.

Where "official" and "certified" get confused

University instructions tend to use the word official for two unrelated ideas, and applicants conflate them constantly.

• Official transcript means a document issued by your school, typically sealed or sent electronically through a secure channel. Officialness lives in the chain of custody, not the language.
• Official translation usually just means a certified translation — one with a signed accuracy statement from a third party.

Some universities add a third requirement: the translation must arrive in the same sealed envelope as the original, or be sent by the issuing institution. If that is the instruction, you need the translation in hand *before* the registrar's office packs the envelope, which changes your sequence entirely. If the portal simply says "upload your transcript and an English translation," a PDF of each is fine, and you can see what that costs on our pricing page before you commit.

A fourth phrase, sworn translation, appears when the applicant is used to a civil-law system. Spain, Brazil, Poland, France and many others appoint translators who hold a government commission, and documents translated outside that system have no standing at home. The United States has no equivalent. A US university asking for an official translation is asking for a certified translation, not for a sworn translator's seal, and a sworn translator abroad is not more acceptable to a US admissions office than a certified translation is.

The credential evaluator is answering a different question

WES, ECE, SpanTran, Josef Silny and the rest are not translation companies. They are evaluation agencies, and their product is an opinion: your three-year degree is comparable to a US bachelor's degree, your marks convert to a 3.4 GPA on a four-point scale, your 180 credits map to this many US semester hours.

To produce that opinion, the evaluator must first read the document. That is why nearly every agency requires either an English translation submitted with the record, or supplies its own translation service for an additional fee. Two things follow:

1. The translation comes first, logically and often chronologically. An evaluator cannot grade a transcript it cannot read.
2. The evaluation does not replace the translation for every reader. Some universities want the evaluation report only. Others want the report *and* the translated transcript in the file. A scholarship office, a licensing board or a future employer may want the translation on its own.

Agencies also differ on who may do the translating. Several require that translations come from a professional service rather than from the applicant, and some will only accept translations submitted directly by the issuing institution alongside the sealed academic record. Those are agency rules, not US law, and they are published — read the agency's document requirements page for your country specifically, because requirements are often country-by-country.

What a correct academic translation looks like

Transcripts are the hardest common document to translate well, because so much of the meaning is structural. A clean academic translation does these things:

• Reproduces the grading scale as it appears, without converting it. If the original shows 17/20, the translation shows 17/20. Converting a French mark to a US letter grade is an evaluator's job, and doing it inside a translation misrepresents the source.
• Keeps credit hours and contact hours in the original units, labeled as the original labels them.
• Translates degree and course titles literally, with the original name retained where a direct equivalent does not exist. A Brazilian specialist degree (especialização) is not a master's degree, and calling it one in the translation is an error that an evaluator will catch.
• Mirrors the layout — tables stay tables, columns stay in order, so the reader can lay the two pages side by side.
• Accounts for every mark on the page: stamps, seals, signatures, handwritten annotations, the registrar's notes in the margin, and anything printed on the reverse. These are described in brackets rather than skipped.
• Includes the back of the sheet. Many transcripts print the grading legend on the reverse, and it is frequently the single most useful element for an evaluator.

Our diploma and transcript translation page covers the formatting conventions in more detail, and there is a fuller treatment of the transcript-specific problems in this guide to what schools actually require.

Which documents schools ask for beyond the transcript

International admissions files rarely stop at academic records. Depending on the program and your status, you may be asked to translate:

• Diplomas and degree certificates, separate from the transcript, because many systems issue them as distinct documents.
• Secondary school leaving certificates — the baccalaureate, the school-leaving attestation, the maturity certificate — for undergraduate admission.
• Birth certificates, usually for the international student office rather than admissions, to confirm identity and date of birth for immigration paperwork.
• Passport biographic pages, for name matching across documents.
• Bank statements or sponsor affidavits, for the financial documentation behind an I-20.
• Marriage certificates, if a name on the academic record does not match the name on the application.

That last one causes more delays than anything else in the list. If your diploma carries your maiden name and your passport carries your married name, the file has a gap, and a translated marriage certificate is usually what closes it. If your documents are in Spanish, Portuguese or another common source language, the relevant Spanish to English translation page shows how we handle those specific records.

The sequence that avoids a second round

Most applicants who end up paying twice did the steps in the wrong order. A workable sequence looks like this:

1. Find the international admissions page for your specific school, not the general application instructions. Policies live there, and they frequently differ by program.
2. Write down exactly three answers: does the school require a credential evaluation, does it require translations to arrive from the issuing institution, and does it name an approved agency.
3. Request sealed official copies from your home institution — more than you think you need, since both the evaluator and the university may require their own.
4. Get certified translations of everything, including the reverse sides and the grading legend.
5. Submit to the evaluator first if one is required, since the report takes longest.
6. Upload or mail to the university with both the original-language document and the English translation in the same file or envelope.

One practical note on timing: a certified translation is not the long pole. A typical one- to three-page document comes back within 24 hours, and same-day delivery exists for deadline emergencies. Credential evaluations and sealed transcripts from overseas registrars are where weeks disappear. Order the translation when you need it; do not wait on it to start the rest.

Notarization, apostilles and the things schools rarely want

Three add-ons get purchased unnecessarily for university files.

Notarization attaches a notary's seal to the translator's signature. The notary confirms who signed, not that the translation is right — in most US states a notary is prohibited from certifying accuracy at all. A small number of universities and a few foreign ministries still ask for it as a formality. Add it when it is named in writing, and skip it otherwise. There is a full breakdown in certified vs. notarized translation.

An apostille certifies an underlying public document for use abroad under the Hague Convention, and it is issued by a government authority in the country where the document originated. It applies to the original record, not to a translation produced in the United States. US universities do not ask for apostilles on translations; if yours does, read the request carefully, because it almost certainly concerns the original diploma.

Agency-provided translation is offered by several credential evaluators as a bundled service. It is a legitimate option. Compare it on two points: the per-page cost against our certified translation at $24.95 per page, and whether the agency returns a translation you can reuse elsewhere — for a visa application, a licensing board, an employer — or whether it stays locked inside their report. A standalone certified translation belongs to you and can be submitted anywhere.

Frequently asked questions