What we will not promise
A translation is not a credential evaluation
We translate the transcript completely, including the grading key on the back. What it is worth here is somebody else's judgement.
What you will see advertised
“We will translate your degree and tell you what it is worth here.”
One sentence, two products, and only one of them is for sale here. The second half is the expensive half to get wrong, because it is usually bought once and shown to somebody who has already decided which suppliers they will look at.
Two different products, in a particular order
Rendering a transcript into English and saying what an American qualification it corresponds to are two different products. The second is a credential evaluation, it is bought from an evaluation service rather than from a translator, and most of them want the translation first.
The order matters as much as the distinction. Most evaluators want a complete translation in front of them before they will start, so the thing to buy first is usually the part we do — and buying it in the wrong order can mean paying for a document twice.
Why a translator making the judgement is worse than useless
The temptation is entirely real, and at the moment it happens it does not feel like overreach.
The temptation is obvious: we have the transcript open, we can read the grading key, and a customer is asking. But an equivalence is a judgement about a foreign education system and the institution that awarded it, made against criteria the receiving body has usually specified, and a translator making one has produced a document that looks authoritative and carries no authority. Universities and licensing boards frequently name which evaluation services they will accept, and a translation company is never on the list.
What we do instead
We translate the transcript completely, including the grading key on the back that everybody forgets, in a layout the evaluator can work from — and we say plainly that the next step is somebody else. Ask the body that wants it which evaluators it accepts before paying anyone, because that answer changes what you should buy.
And it costs nothing to find out. One call to the office that asked you for the document settles the order of everything else, and it is reliably the call people make last — after the money has gone on whichever half somebody happened to sell them first.
The other nine
One argument in ten parts. Each one is a sentence this trade sells and a plainer thing that is true instead.
Send us the document
A photograph is enough to quote from, and you will hear what the problem is — if there is one — before anybody starts work rather than afterwards.