Translate Your Chinese Degree or Diploma for Australia

Who issues a degree certificate in China

Chinese graduates hold two separate documents: the 毕业证书 (graduation certificate) confirming completion, and the 学位证书 (degree certificate) conferring the academic degree. Assessors expect both, and translating only one is a frequent cause of delay.

Chinese civil documents come from several distinct systems. Birth medical certificates have been issued by hospitals under the National Health Commission since 1996; marriage and divorce certificates come from Civil Affairs Bureaus as booklets with a photograph; and notarial certificates (公证书) are issued by public notary offices as bilingual booklets. Household registration is recorded in the hukou (户口簿) booklet.

What your certified English translation reproduces

Every certified translation we issue is a complete rendering of the source document — not a summary. For a Chinese degree certificate that means:

• Award title in the original language, followed by a literal English rendering
• Field of study, faculty and the awarding institution's full legal name
• Date of conferral and the graduation or register number
• Classification, honours or grade of award where the certificate states one
• Accreditation or ministry recognition wording printed on the document
• Rector, dean or registrar signatures, embossed seals and security features

Chinese names, dates and script

Chinese names are written family name first in simplified characters, with pinyin romanisation on the passport. The same character set can produce different pinyin across Mandarin and Cantonese conventions, and Hong Kong and Taiwan documents use traditional characters. Dates are written year-month-day, and the identity card number encodes date of birth and region.

Seals, stamps and legalisation

Red official seals (公章) are the primary authentication and are described rather than reproduced. Since China acceded to the Hague Apostille Convention in November 2023, documents for Australian use may carry an apostille issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or an authorised provincial foreign affairs office, replacing the older consular legalisation route for many applicants.

How Australian agencies read this document

Assessing authorities use the award title and conferral date to establish qualification level. We keep the original title intact and give a literal English equivalent rather than asserting an Australian AQF level, which is the assessor's decision to make.

Central to skills assessments for subclass 189, 190 and 491, to employer-sponsored nomination evidence, to postgraduate admission, and to points claims for overseas qualifications.

What we check before certifying

Most delays are caused by the source document, not the translation. These are the issues we look for on Chinese degree certificates and raise with you before the file is certified:

• Ordering a second translation without first checking whether the existing English pages meet the receiving organisation's request
• A hukou booklet where only the personal page is scanned, when the household relationship pages are what evidence the family link
• Traditional-character documents from Hong Kong or Taiwan treated as mainland-issued, which points at the wrong issuing authority entirely
• Translating the diploma but not the transcript, when most assessors require both together
• Claiming an Australian equivalence on the translation itself instead of leaving it to the assessing body
• Older award titles from superseded education systems rendered as a modern equivalent, which misstates the qualification

Pages, pricing and turnaround

A degree certificate is usually one page at $59 and pairs naturally with the transcript. Order them together and both come back in the same certified bundle, typically within 24 hours.