Leave the Degree Alone, Then Explain It

A good share of my work is education documents: degree certificates, transcripts, school diplomas. They go to universities, credential evaluators, embassies and employers. Each of those readers wants two things. They want to understand the qualification, and they want to match it to the original.

Those two needs pull in different directions, so I serve them separately.

The title stays, the meaning follows

I do not translate academic degrees and titles. I keep them in their original form and add the English in square brackets:

Sarjana Teknik (S.T.) [Bachelor of Engineering]

A degree title is an official designation. It appears on the certificate, on the transcript, and after the holder's name for the rest of their career. If the translation turns it into "Bachelor of Engineering (S.T.)", the reader now sees an English title the university never awarded. The bracket says: this is what it means, and the original is right in front of you.

The qualification and the paper are different things

A person earns a Bachelor's Degree. The document that proves it is a Bachelor's Degree Certificate. I keep that distinction, because evaluators do. "Earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics" and "attached a Bachelor's Degree Certificate in Economics" are two different sentences, and both are correct.

Ijazah is not one word

Ijazah covers every level, and English does not have one word for all of them. A high school ijazah is a Diploma. A university one is a Degree Certificate. A D3 is an Associate Degree Certificate, and a D4 is a Bachelor's Degree Equivalent Certificate. Calling everything a diploma flattens real differences that the reader is trying to assess.

SKL is not a temporary diploma

An SKL (Surat Keterangan Lulus) is issued before the final certificate is ready. "Temporary Diploma" is a common rendering, and I avoid it. The document certifies that the student has graduated. So I call it a Certificate of Graduation, which is what it is.

Names of institutions

Universitas Indonesia stays Universitas Indonesia. SMA Negeri 1 Jakarta stays SMA Negeri 1 Jakarta. If the institution has an official English name, I use that. If it does not, I leave the name alone, because a university's name is a proper noun.

And when it is not my translation

I follow all of this in my own work. When I proofread someone else's, I leave their degree format alone. On a recent review the signatory's titles appeared as "AP, M.Si" with no gloss. That is a defensible choice, and it was not mine to change. Proofreading fixes errors; house style belongs to the person who wrote the translation.