Translate Your French Degree / Diploma for Australia

Who issues a degree certificate in France

A diplôme is issued by the institution under the authority of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, and is normally accompanied by the annexe descriptive au diplôme (Diploma Supplement), which may already be bilingual. Titles such as licence, maîtrise, master 2 and diplôme d'ingénieur are rendered literally, since a licence is a three-year bachelor and not a licence to practise.

French civil-status records are held by the service de l'état civil at the mairie of the commune where the event was registered, and are issued as a copie intégrale, an extrait avec filiation or an extrait sans filiation — three different documents that Australian agencies treat very differently. Events involving French nationals abroad are held instead by the Service central d'état civil in Nantes. Recent extracts are laser-printed on plain stock with a mairie stamp; documents from the 1960s and 1970s are typed on registry forms, and older communal registers are handwritten.

What your certified English translation reproduces

Every certified translation we issue is a complete rendering of the source document — not a summary. For a French 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

French names, dates and script

French records distinguish the nom de naissance, which never changes, from the nom d'usage a spouse may adopt on marriage — and this distinction, not spelling, is the leading cause of name mismatch in Australian applications. Accents (é, è, ê, ç, ï) are dropped by Australian systems. Dates run day/month/year, and the mentions marginales printed in the margin of a copie intégrale record marriage, divorce, PACS and death against the original entry; they are part of the document and are always translated.

Seals, stamps and legalisation

Expect the commune's stamp, the officier d'état civil's signature and, on documents for use abroad, an apostille issued by the cour d'appel of the district where the document originates. French agencies increasingly issue EU multilingual standard forms under Regulation 2016/1191, which reduce legalisation formalities inside the EU but do nothing for an Australian application — a NAATI-certified English translation is still required. Older communal entries are cursive and abbreviation-heavy, and unreadable passages are marked as illegible rather than reconstructed.

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 French degree certificates and raise with you before the file is certified:

• Ordering an extrait sans filiation when the Australian agency needs parentage — only the copie intégrale or extrait avec filiation shows the parents
• Cropping the mentions marginales out of a scan, which removes the record of a divorce or a name change the case officer is looking for
• Presenting a nom d'usage on the passport and a nom de naissance on the acte de naissance without explaining the relationship between them
• Assuming an EU multilingual standard form is self-sufficient for Home Affairs — it is not
• 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.