Russian to English Translation

This direction is used when a Russian document has to be sent to an English-speaking country. The source is a diploma, birth record or contract coming from Russia or from the Central Asian and Caucasian countries in which Russian is the official or administrative language; the destination is the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada. The defining issue of this pair is transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin one, together with carrying the patronymic field particular to Russian across to an English form.

The main users are people who have an educational or working background in Russia or the CIS countries and are moving to an English-speaking country: the student applying for a master’s degree in the United States with a Russian diploma, the family submitting documents of CIS origin to a Canadian immigration process, the company presenting its Russian contract to an English-speaking counterparty. In these profiles the most fragile point is that the person’s name should look the same in every document and in the passport; a small difference in transliteration ties the documents to different people.

Challenges specific to this pair

There is more than one system for carrying Cyrillic names into the Latin alphabet; in official translation, however, the only criterion is the machine-readable spelling in the person’s international passport. Where GOST or library transliteration conflicts with the passport spelling, the passport prevails, since otherwise the person in the application and the person in the document do not match. In Russian names the patronymic (отчество) is a separate element and is not written automatically into the English “middle name” field; it is carried across on a separate line, stated to be a patronymic. The date format follows the English destination.

The second difficulty lies in institutional and educational terms. Russian document names (свидетельство, аттестат, диплом) are rendered into English by their institutional function. Russian and Soviet higher education concepts are not forced onto an equivalent English degree; the recognition decision is left to the assessing body (WES/ECE in the United States, provincial associations in Canada), and the marking system (out of 5) is not converted but explained. In documents left from the Soviet period, institution and place names appear in the form they had at the time, while their current equivalents are also stated where necessary.

Third, the seals and numbers on Russian documents call for care. The positions of official seals, stamps and signatures are preserved in the translation with a note; their content is translated. Registry and serial numbers are not translated, but the record they belong to is stated, so that the link between documents belonging to the same person can be established. In multi-document immigration and recognition files, the transliteration of the name, the patronymic and the date format are kept the same across every document, because English-speaking authorities may read even the smallest inconsistency as separate documents.

Soviet-era documents are a separate area of attention in this direction. On diplomas and records issued before 1991, institution and city names carry the form of that period; these are conveyed as they stand, while the institution’s present-day name or the country it is in is stated with a note where necessary, because an English-speaking assessor does not know the administrative map of that period. Since the recognition bodies in the United States and Canada (WES, ECE and the provincial associations) usually carry out a course-by-course assessment, every course, credit and mark on the transcript has to be conveyed in full; a summarised translation leaves the assessment at a dead end. The positions of the embossed and inked seals and of holographic records on Russian documents are likewise indicated in the translation with a note; their content is translated and their official function preserved. This consistency and completeness is what allows the translation to be processed at an English-speaking institution in one go, without prompting a request for further documents.

Documents for which this direction is requested

Education files come first; diplomas, transcripts and course descriptions are at the centre of the recognition assessment. Next come birth, marriage and civil registry records; criminal record certificates and administrative certificates; and commercial contracts and company documents. Throughout the file the name and the patronymic are kept in a single form.

• Russian/CIS diplomas, transcripts and course descriptions
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Criminal record certificates and administrative certificates
• Commercial contracts and company documents

Chain of certification

Because the destination is an English-speaking country, no sworn translator system is looked for; the United States and the United Kingdom ask for a translation with a statement of accuracy, while Canada asks for a translator registered with an association or an affidavit. An apostille or the applicable certification has to be obtained for the source document in its country of issue; for Russia the apostille position may vary because of bilateral agreements, so confirmation is needed. You can see how expectations vary by destination on the country certification regime page and the papers required in the document guide.

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The fee and turnaround information on this page is based on the current tariff; it may vary with the features of the document. Verify the details with the institution you will submit the papers to.