Slovak to English Translation

This direction is used when a Slovak document has to be submitted in an English-speaking country. The typical applicant is someone who studied or worked in Slovakia and is applying to a university, an employer or an immigration authority in the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. The document carries the Slovak administrative structure, while the authority that will read it assesses it within an Anglo-Saxon culture.

Concrete examples clarify the direction: a student applying for a master’s programme in the USA with a Slovak university diploma, the service records of a specialist who worked in Slovakia and moved to the United Kingdom, the civil registry records of a family relocating to Canada. What they have in common is that the document is meaningful within the Slovak system while the receiving side does not recognise that context directly.

Education files are the backbone of demand; the international standing of Slovak higher education keeps diploma and transcript translation in constant demand in this direction. The second cluster is employment and civil registry documents. In these files the documents are most often submitted together and are expected to come from the same hand.

The common difficulty with these documents is that Slovak administrative reality is not directly recognisable to an English-speaking authority and that the special letters of the language have to be carried across correctly; the translation resolves these differences and transfers the document into the target system.

Technical issues specific to Slovak into English

The Slovak letters carrying carons, apostrophe-like marks and length accents (ľ, ĺ, ŕ, š, č, ž, á, é) are carried across in personal and place names according to the spelling in the passport. Female surnames mostly end in -ová (e.g. Horváthová); this ending is not dropped in the English translation or reduced to the masculine form but kept exactly as in the passport.

Slovak official style rests on case inflection; when carried into English it is resolved into prepositional structures and each condition is given separately. This unpacking ensures that no obligation is lost along the way.

Institution names are rendered according to their function; the grading system (1 the best, 5 the worst) is not equated with an English counterpart, and the direction of the scale is stated explicitly to prevent it being read the wrong way round. Because dates are given in day-month-year order, the month is written out in words in the English translation.

The seal and the registration details on the document are kept in their position; registration numbers are not translated but cited as recorded. Keeping the masculine or feminine form of the surname consistent across documents belonging to the same person secures identity matching.

Because the Slovak diploma system rests on the European higher education framework, the credit and level information in the transcript is clearly preserved in the English translation; the recognition body assesses on the basis of these data, and a summary rendering delays the process.

In older documents from the Czechoslovak period, institution and place names may appear in the form of the day; these names are kept in their original form and explained where necessary, because forcing them into a present-day counterpart would undermine the historical accuracy of the document.

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

Address and institution details are carried across in an orderly form so that the authority reading in English can follow them; place names are not translated but kept in their original spelling. In bank and income documents, amounts are adapted from Slovak to English usage only at the level of separators; the value and the currency are kept as they are and not converted. In this way the authority reading in English reads the amounts correctly and the financial information in the document remains beyond dispute.

Documents for which this direction is required

• Diplomas (vysvedčenie/diplom), transcripts and course descriptions
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Employment, service and criminal record certificates
• Bank and income documents
• Professional qualification certificates

Education files are the backbone of demand; keeping the masculine or feminine form of the surname the same across all documents secures identity matching. A detailed breakdown of courses and credits is required.

In employment files the service record and job titles are carried across accurately. In family documents the relationships between relatives are stated clearly.

Chain of certification

Because the target is an English-speaking country, the sworn translator system does not come into play: the USA 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 Slovakia is expected to bear an apostille.

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

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The values here are for a typical file; the page count and the difficulty of the subject may affect the result. For the applicable conditions, consult the institution’s current list of documents.