How to Translate a Diploma for a US Employer

The job offer is contingent on a background check, and the screening vendor has emailed you asking for "an official English translation of your degree." Your diploma is in Portuguese, or Mandarin, or Arabic, and the email does not say what "official" means, whether a photo of the certificate is enough, or why the vendor also mentioned something called an equivalency report. The cost of guessing wrong is real: order the wrong thing and you delay a start date, order both and you pay twice for work you may not need.

The confusion is understandable, because two different services are hiding behind the same request. One is a translation. The other is an evaluation. They are produced by different providers, cost different amounts, and answer different questions. Figuring out which one your employer actually wants takes about five minutes and saves considerably more than that.

Translation and evaluation answer two different questions

A certified translation answers: *what does this document say?* A translator renders every element of your diploma into English — the degree name, the institution, the conferral date, the signatures, the seals, the registration numbers — and signs a statement attesting that the translation is complete and accurate and that they are competent to translate from that language into English. The translator makes no judgment about the degree itself. If the certificate says a Licentiate in Law (Licenciatura en Derecho), the translation says Licentiate in Law. It does not say "equivalent to a US Juris Doctor," because that is not the translator's call.

A credential evaluation answers: *what is this degree worth in the United States?* An evaluation agency reviews your diploma and transcript, checks the institution's accreditation in its home country, counts credit hours, and issues a report stating that your credential is comparable to, for example, a US bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. That is an opinion rendered by an evaluator, not a linguistic service.

A translator tells you what the paper says; an evaluator tells you what the paper is worth here. No single document does both.

The practical consequence: if the employer's concern is "did this person really graduate from the school they listed," you need a translation. If the concern is "does this person meet our bachelor's-degree minimum," you may need an evaluation — and the evaluation agency will usually require a certified translation as an input before they begin.

How to tell which one HR is actually asking for

Read the request language carefully. The vocabulary is a reliable signal.

• "Certified translation," "official English translation," "translated copy with certification" — they want a translation.
• "Credential evaluation," "equivalency report," "course-by-course evaluation," "degree equivalency," or a named agency such as a NACES member — they want an evaluation.
• "Proof of degree," "verification of education," "highest level of education completed" — usually a translation, sometimes just the diploma itself if the screening vendor can verify directly with the institution.
• "Document-by-document" versus "course-by-course" — both are evaluation types, not translation types. Course-by-course is the more detailed one and requires your transcript.

If the request is ambiguous, ask one question: *does this need to go to a credential evaluation agency, or do you just need the English text of the diploma?* HR teams answer that quickly, and the answer determines everything else. When in doubt, the translation is the safer first purchase, because an evaluation almost always needs one anyway, while a translation is frequently sufficient on its own.

When employers genuinely need an evaluation

Not every foreign-degree hire triggers an evaluation. These situations usually do:

1. The role has a hard degree requirement written into the job description or a government contract. Someone has to document that your credential meets the bar, and an evaluation report is the standard artifact.
2. The employer is sponsoring an immigration petition. H-1B and employment-based green card filings turn on whether the degree is equivalent to a US bachelor's or higher, and the attorney handling the case will specify exactly which agency and which report type they want.
3. The job requires a state license. Nursing, engineering, accounting, teaching, and pharmacy boards set their own documentation rules, and most require both a certified translation and an evaluation sent directly from the agency.
4. The employer's internal policy requires it for all foreign credentials. Some large organizations simply do, regardless of role.

Outside of those, routine employment verification generally stops at the translated diploma. A recruiter who wants to confirm you hold the degree you claim does not need a credit-hour analysis.

What belongs in the translated diploma

A diploma looks simple — a few lines of text on decorated paper — but the parts that matter to a verifier are the ones people skip. A usable diploma translation reproduces every element, including the ones that are not sentences:

• The full legal name of the institution as printed, not a common abbreviation or an English trade name the school uses abroad.
• Your name exactly as it appears on the diploma, even if it differs from your passport or your resume. Differences get explained in a note, never silently corrected.
• The degree title in its original form, translated literally, with the original in parentheses where the title has no clean English counterpart.
• The field of study, the date of conferral, and any honors or distinction.
• Seals, stamps, embossments and signatures, each described in a bracketed note — for example, a round seal of the university rector — because the verifier is checking that those marks exist.
• Registration, folio, book and page numbers, which are how the issuing institution locates your record if the employer writes to confirm it.

Layout matters more than people expect. A translation that mirrors the original's structure lets a reviewer hold the two pages side by side and match each element without reading the source language. That mirroring is part of what you are paying for; our certified translation includes formatting that follows the original.

Diploma, transcript, or both

Employers ask for different combinations, and the difference is not arbitrary.

The diploma is a credential statement. It proves a degree was conferred, on a date, by an institution. It says nothing about what you studied beyond the field name.

The transcript is an academic record. It lists courses, credit hours, grades, and often a grading scale legend printed in the original language. It is longer, denser, and costs more to translate because translation is priced per page at $24.95 per page, where a page is up to 250 words, and a four-year transcript runs well past one page.

For straight employment verification, the diploma alone is usually enough. For a credential evaluation, a licensing board, or anything described as "course-by-course," you will need both. If you are also applying to a graduate program with the same documents, the standards differ slightly — our guide on what schools actually require from transcripts covers that side.

One rule holds everywhere: do not translate selectively. If a transcript has a grading scale on the back, it gets translated. If the diploma has text on the reverse, it gets translated. A partial translation invites the exact follow-up question you were trying to avoid.

Certified, notarized, apostilled: what the employer means

Three words get used interchangeably by people who do not work with documents daily. They are not interchangeable.

Certified means the translation comes with a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy stating that it is complete and accurate and that the translator is competent in the language pair. This is what nearly every employer, evaluation agency and licensing board means when they say "official." It is the standard the federal government applies to immigration filings under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3), and private institutions have largely borrowed the same language. If you want the mechanics, we wrote about what a Certificate of Translation Accuracy contains.

Notarized means a notary public watched the translator sign the certificate and verified their identity. The notary attests to nothing about the translation's quality — in most US states a notary is barred from certifying accuracy. Some licensing boards still list it, so add it when it is asked for and skip it otherwise. We cover the distinction in detail in certified versus notarized translation.

Apostilled applies to the original diploma, not the translation, and only when a document issued in one Hague Convention country needs to be recognized in another. A US employer reviewing a foreign diploma inside the United States has no use for one. If someone asks you to apostille a translation, ask them to point to the policy, because the request usually reflects a misunderstanding of what an apostille does.

Sequencing it so you don't pay twice

Order of operations is where money gets wasted. Work backward from the final recipient.

1. Identify who makes the final decision — the employer directly, a background screening vendor, an evaluation agency, or a state licensing board. Their requirements govern; the recruiter forwarding the email is rarely the authority.
2. Get their documentation list in writing. One email saves one duplicate order.
3. Gather clean scans of the originals. A flat, fully legible photo or scan of the entire document, all four corners visible, including the reverse side if anything is printed there.
4. Order the certified translation first if an evaluation is in play, since the agency will want it as an input. Standard turnaround for a one- to three-page document is within 24 hours, and same-day delivery is available if the start date is close.
5. Submit to the evaluation agency with both the original-language copies and the translations, following their submission rules exactly — some require the agency receive documents directly from the institution.
6. Send the employer what they asked for, keeping the PDF for the next employer, the next licensing board, and the next time someone asks.

A certified translation does not expire. The diploma says what it said the day it was issued, and a properly certified English version of it remains valid for every future request. If you want to see the full cost before committing, pricing is per page with no separate certification fee, and you can upload your documents for an exact figure through the quote form before you order anything.

Frequently asked questions