Portuguese Diploma & Transcript Translation

Scan the back of the diploma

If you take one thing from this page: photograph both sides of your Brazilian diploma.

Brazilian diplomas carry their registration details — the registration number, the registering institution, the authorising signatures and seals — on the reverse. The front is the ceremonial face of the document; the back is where the administrative proof lives. A certified translation has to be complete, so a translation of the front alone is an incomplete translation, and incompleteness is a rejection reason in its own right no matter how accurate the rest of the work is.

The same goes for pages that look blank. If there is a stamp on it, it needs translating.

Diploma and histórico escolar

Two documents, doing two jobs.

The diploma names the qualification, the institution and the date. The histórico escolar is your academic transcript: subjects taken, hours or credits for each, and grades awarded. The evaluator assesses the histórico; the diploma confirms the award. Both are normally required, and for a longer programme the histórico runs to several pages — send all of them, in order.

If the diploma has not arrived yet

Brazilian institutions commonly issue a certificado de conclusão de curso as soon as you finish, while the diploma itself goes through registration, which can take many months. Applicants often assume they have to wait.

Frequently they do not. Many evaluators and admissions offices will accept the completion certificate together with the histórico escolar as an interim submission, and ask for the diploma when it is released. Whether yours will is a question for the recipient, so ask before you delay an application by a semester. We translate whichever documents you hold today, and the diploma later when it arrives.

Three undergraduate degrees, not one

Brazilian higher education issues qualifications that a careless translation flattens into “bachelor’s degree”:

• Bacharelado — a general undergraduate degree in a field.
• Licenciatura — an undergraduate degree that additionally qualifies the holder to teach in schools.
• Tecnólogo — a shorter, applied technology degree.

These are genuinely different awards, and the difference is material both to a credential evaluator’s assessment and to a licensing board deciding whether you can practise. We translate each as what it is and let the evaluator draw the equivalence, which is its job rather than ours.

Portugal’s structure differs again, and post-Bologna reforms changed the meaning of some titles there — a licenciatura in Portugal is not the Brazilian licenciatura. A linguist working in the right variety handles that; a generic Portuguese translator often does not.

Grades stay on their own scale

Brazilian grades are usually recorded out of 10. Portuguese grades are usually recorded out of 20. Neither is a US GPA, and converting between them is the credential evaluator’s professional judgement — the service you are paying it for.

So the translation reproduces the grades and the scale exactly as printed on the document. A translation that offers a converted GPA is overstepping, and it gives an evaluator a reason to question the rest of the file.

Brazil, Portugal, and everywhere else Portuguese is official

The variety matters more than people expect. Document names differ — Portugal issues a carta de curso and a certidão de registo where Brazil issues a diploma and a histórico escolar — and so does the institutional vocabulary around registration, credits and course structure. Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde each have their own institutional naming again.

We assign a linguist who works in the variety your document is actually written in, and we ask which country issued it, because the answer changes the terminology, the expected document set, and which authority verifies it.

Apostilles

An apostille authenticates the original document, not the translation. Brazil and Portugal are both parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, so an apostille is obtainable in either country from the competent authority there.

Whether you need one is a question for the recipient — evaluators and universities differ, and plenty never ask. Confirm before spending on it. If you do need one, get it before the translation where you can, so the apostille and its wording are included in the certified translation instead of requiring a second one later.

Translation is not evaluation

These are two different services and most applicants need both.

A certified translation renders your Portuguese documents into English with a signed statement that the translation is complete and accurate. A credential evaluation is a separate professional opinion on what your qualification is equivalent to in the United States, issued by an evaluator you choose — for example a member of NACES. The translation is an input to the evaluation, not a substitute for it.

Taika provides the translation. We do not perform credential evaluations, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any evaluator.

Request a quote for your documents, or if you need a single diploma and know the page count, order a diploma translation from the store. For the wider picture, see academic credential translation and our guide to diploma and transcript translation for WES and ECE.