School Certificate Translation in Georgia

Which school documents are translated and why

The atestati is issued after the twelfth grade, following the school leaving examinations, and comes with an annex listing subjects and final grades. This pair is the core of every application to a foreign bachelor's program, a foundation or preparatory year, a Studienkolleg in Germany, a college in the United States or Canada, or a vocational program in Poland, the Czech Republic or Italy. Students who leave school before the twelfth grade, transfer during the year or apply to an exchange program instead need annual report cards, a transcript of grades for the completed years, or a letter from the school confirming enrollment and the current grade.

Younger children moving abroad with their families need report cards and a school confirmation so that the receiving school can place them in the right grade. In the reverse direction, foreign families enrolling children in Georgian public or private schools are asked for translated report cards, transfer certificates and sometimes vaccination records, and for international schools in Tbilisi an English or Georgian version of the previous school's records.

Beyond admissions, a translated atestati is required for recognition of secondary education in countries that check it before allowing entry to higher education (the Czech nostrification of secondary education, the German Hochschulzugangsberechtigung assessment via uni-assist), for some visa categories that require proof of completed education, and occasionally for employment.

The Georgian school grading system in translation

Georgian schools grade on a 10-point scale, where 10 is the highest mark and 5 is generally the pass threshold, with the annual grade calculated from semester grades and, in the final years, combined with the school leaving examination results. Older certificates from the 1990s and the Soviet period use the 5-point scale, where 5 is "excellent" and 3 is "satisfactory". Foreign admissions offices convert these to their own systems (a German Abitur-style average, a US GPA, the Dutch 10-point scale, which looks the same but is calibrated differently), so the translation must state which scale applies and what its limits are.

We reproduce every grade exactly and add a standard translator's note describing the scale used on that certificate. We do not convert grades, because the receiving institution will do it according to its own rules and a translator's conversion could be taken as an official statement. Subject names are translated into the standard terms used in the destination's curriculum (for example "Georgian language and literature", "History of Georgia", "Natural sciences") so that the officer can match them to required subjects for the chosen program.

School names, examinations and stamps

Georgian public schools are numbered (Tbilisi Public School No. 55, for example) and often carry the name of a notable person; private schools have their own names and some have official English names. We use the official English form where one exists and a consistent transliteration where it does not, and we keep the school's registration details and the Ministry of Education references exactly as printed. The school leaving examinations administered by the National Assessment and Examinations Center are named as such, and the unified national examination results, when included in the file, are translated as a separate document.

Stamps and signatures on the atestati, the annex and report cards are all translated, including the registration number of the certificate form, which universities occasionally verify. Reverse sides of report cards, where teachers' comments and attendance data are recorded, are translated when the receiving school asks for them; otherwise we translate the grade pages only, to keep the cost proportionate.

Apostille and notarization for school documents

Whether a school certificate needs an apostille depends on the destination. Universities in Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and most other EU countries usually require the atestati and annex to be apostilled through the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (EQE) before translation. Universities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and most private international schools, typically require only a certified or notarized translation. Foundation programs and language schools generally do not need an apostille at all.

The EQE apostille takes longer than a civil-document apostille because the document is first verified against education records, so it should be requested well before application deadlines. Once the apostille is on the original, we translate the certificate, the annex and the apostille together and notarize the translation, binding it to a notarized copy so that the original atestati stays clean. The apostille procedure is explained in detail on our apostille page.

For a foreign school certificate used in Georgia (enrollment in a Georgian school, admission to a Georgian university, or recognition of secondary education by EQE), the certificate should carry an apostille or legalization from the issuing country, and we translate it into Georgian in full and notarize the translation in Tbilisi.

Timing around application deadlines

University application windows are fixed and often fall in the same months for many countries, so we recommend starting the translation as soon as the atestati is issued in June or July and, for EU destinations, requesting the EQE apostille immediately. A certificate and annex in a common language pair are translated and notarized within one to two working days once the originals are available for the notarized copy. If several universities in different countries are being applied to, we prepare an English set and a second-language set from one review, and additional notarized copies of the same translation cost significantly less than the first.

For mid-year transfers and exchange programs, where the receiving school needs a partial transcript quickly, we can work from the school's printed grade extract, and the school confirmation letter is translated the same day. Tell us the date the receiving school needs the documents and we will schedule around it.

Common issues and how we handle them

The issues that most often delay a school file are an annex that was never collected from the school, a mismatch between the student's name on the atestati and in the new passport, a certificate issued to a school that has since merged or been renamed, and grades entered by hand that are difficult to read. We check for all of these when the documents arrive, ask the family for a passport spelling reference, and mark any illegible entry rather than guessing a grade. If a document is missing, we tell you what to request from the school and the Ministry before you order the translation.

What to send for a school certificate translation

Scan the atestati and its annex on both sides, and any report cards or transcripts the receiving institution has asked for. Tell us the country, the university or school, and the program, and forward their document checklist if you have one. Send the student's passport data page so that the name is spelled consistently across the whole application.