When a French Transcript Uses Only Ministry Abbreviations

What We Received

A client applying for IQAS (International Qualifications Assessment Service) credential evaluation in Alberta, Canada submitted two documents for [certified French translation](/languages/french). The first was a 2013 Baccalauréat Général — Relevé de Notes from the Académie de Poitiers (Lycée Isaac l'Étoile, Série S, specialization Sciences de la Vie et de la Terre). The second was a 5-year osteopathy transcript (2017–2022) from IFO-GA Avignon, covering roughly 115 individual modules across seven academic domains.

The Baccalauréat grades table listed subjects as "FRANCAIS ECR.", "HIST.GEOG.", "SC. VIE TERRE", "L.V.E. 1 ANGLAIS", "ED.PHYS.SPORT", "APTE-CCF", and "TRAV PERS ENC" — official French Ministry-of-Education shorthand that no IQAS evaluator would read as "Written French," "History and Geography," "Life and Earth Sciences," and so on without context.

The osteopathy [transcript translation](/documents/transcript) was denser still. Course names used osteopathic and medical shorthand: "Anatomie et physiologie du SNC," "Sémiologie ORL — voie auditive," "TOG thoraco-scapulaire," "MET vertèbres thoraciques," "Crâne: SSO," "EFPO crânio-sacrée 4A." Some markers — "n-1" (course completed in prior year), "???" (orphan subject, unassigned to a teaching unit) — were institutional conventions with no English equivalent at all.

How We Handled It

We applied the standard laid out in the AUSIT Best Practices for the Translation of Official and Legal Documents (2022), §17.1: translate each subject name into English as accurately as possible, and preserve the original French designation immediately after in square brackets. This gives the IQAS evaluator the English reading on the left and the institutional identifier on the right — both needs met in one line.

For the Baccalauréat, every row became a two-layer cell: "Written French [FRANÇAIS ECR.]," "History and Geography [HIST. GÉOG.]," "Life and Earth Sciences [SC. VIE TERRE]," "Foreign Living Language 1 — English [L.V.E. 1 ANGLAIS]," "Fit — Continuous Assessment [APTE-CCF]," "Supervised Personal Project [TRAV. PERS. ENC.]." The module codes (subject weightings, coefficients, points) stayed exactly as in the original.

For the osteopathy transcript, common medical abbreviations with established English equivalents were rendered with the English form, with the French original in brackets: "Anatomy and Physiology of the CNS (M1) [SNC]," "ENT Semiology — Auditory Pathway [ORL]," "Jones Techniques — Upper Limb [MS]." Osteopathy-specific abbreviations with no English equivalent (TOG, MET, SSO, LVC, EFPO) were retained in the original French form, with full expansions provided in the Translator's Notes.

Expert Note

"Translator's Notes: (1) Subject names are translated into English with the original French designation retained in square brackets underneath, in accordance with AUSIT 2022 §17.1 for certified translation of official academic documents. (2) Institutional markers preserved from the original: "n-1" indicates the course was completed in a prior academic year (année n-1); "???" designates an orphan subject (matière orpheline) — a module not assigned to any specific teaching unit (UE) in the gradebook system. (3) The French grading scale is 0–20, with 10 as the standard passing threshold; grades in European decimal notation (comma separator) have been rendered with the US decimal point."

Sarah JenkinsAcademic Credential Translator (French, Russian, Ukrainian)

The osteopathy document was a 6-page browser printout from the school's online gradebook (app.intranet.ifoga.net), with a recurring round institutional stamp ("DIRECTEUR IFO-GA D'ÉTABLISSEMENT") partially overlaying some table entries. Every data point under the stamp was verified against the full text layer before transcription. Browser artifacts (the URL bar, the page numbering "1 sur 6" through "6 sur 6," the print timestamp) were identified as browser-print metadata and documented as such in a Translator's Note rather than reproduced as document content.

A signed certificate of accuracy, issued on CertTranslate letterhead with the translator's name and contact details, accompanies both translations — the format IQAS requires for acceptance.

The Outcome

Both certified translations were delivered to the client for inclusion in their IQAS application. The bracketed French originals give the IQAS evaluator a direct cross-reference against the Académie de Poitiers Baccalauréat records and the IFO-GA gradebook, while the English renderings make every course immediately readable.

French academic credentials going to Canadian evaluators (IQAS, WES Canada, ICES, CES) are common in our caseload — and nearly every French transcript contains at least some Ministry abbreviations. The preserve-in-brackets convention is now standard across all our French credential work.