Czech to English Translation

This direction is used when a Czech document has to be put before an English-speaking country. The typical applicant studied or worked in Czechia and is now applying to a university, an employer or an immigration authority in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. The regime of source and target parts company with the cs|de pair: here the document is put not before a German-speaking country but before the Anglo-Saxon declaration system.

Concrete examples make the direction clear: a student applying for a master’s degree in the United States with a Czech university diploma, the documents of a specialist who worked in Czechia and then moved to the United Kingdom, the civil registry records of a family moving to Canada. What they have in common is that the document makes sense within the Czech system but the receiving side does not recognise that context directly.

Education files form the backbone of demand; the international standing of Czech higher education, above all of its medical and engineering programmes, keeps diploma translation in constant demand in this direction. The second group is work and civil registry documents.

The shared difficulty with these documents is that the Czech administrative reality is not directly recognisable to an English-speaking authority, and that the special letters of the language and women’s surnames have to be carried across correctly.

Technical matters peculiar to Czech into English

Women’s surnames are the first point to watch in this pair: in Czech they mostly end in the -ová suffix (for example Svobodová). In the English translation that ending is not dropped or reduced to the masculine form; it is preserved exactly as spelled in the passport. Otherwise the translation conflicts with the civil registry record.

The hooked and accented letters of Czech (ř, č, š, ž, ě) are carried across in line with the spelling in the passport; the ř sound in particular has no counterpart in English and is preserved as a letter. Place names are not translated but given in their original spelling.

The Czech grading system, in which 1 is the best and 5 the worst, is not equated with an English counterpart, and the direction of the scale is stated openly so that it is not read the wrong way round. Institutional names are rendered according to their function; because dates are given in day-month-year order, the month is written out in words.

The seal and registration details on the document are preserved in place; registry numbers are not translated but given with a reference to the record. Keeping the form of the surname consistent across documents belonging to the same person secures the identity match.

Since the Czech diploma system rests on the European higher education framework, the credit and level information in the transcript is preserved openly; a detailed breakdown of courses is asked for above all in medical and engineering applications.

In older documents from the Czechoslovak period, institutional and place names may appear in the form they had at the time; these names are preserved as they stand and an explanation is added where necessary, because forcing them into a present-day counterpart damages the historical accuracy of the document.

Because Czech and Slovak lie close to one another, the two languages may be mixed in some documents; the translation makes clear which language has been taken as the source and terms are chosen consistently for that language.

The Czech official register rests on case inflection; in the move into English it is resolved into prepositional structures and each condition is set out separately, so that no obligation is lost along the way. Address and institutional details are conveyed in the same orderly fashion; place names are not translated but preserved in their original spelling, with an explanation added where necessary. In bank and income documents amounts are not converted; only the decimal and thousands separators are adapted to the target notation, and the currency is stated as it stands. Converting an amount into its foreign currency equivalent would be an intervention beyond the translator’s authority and would leave the document open to dispute.

Which documents call for this direction

• Diplomas, the vysvědčení and transcripts of marks
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Employment, service and criminal record documents
• Bank and income documents
• Professional qualification documents

Education files form the backbone of demand; keeping the form of the surname the same across all documents secures the identity match. A detailed breakdown of courses is required in medical and engineering applications.

In work files the record of service and job titles are conveyed accurately. In family documents the relationships between relatives are set out openly.

Chain of certification

Because the target is an English-speaking country, the sworn translator system does not come into play: the United States and the United Kingdom ask for a signed statement of accuracy, Canada for a translator registered with a provincial association or an affidavit, Australia for NAATI accreditation. A document arriving from Czechia is expected to carry an apostille.

For these differing expectations, look at the certification regime of the target country and the requirements for the document type. Tell us the form of the surname in the passport and the receiving institution before you send the document.

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