When a Mexican Kardex Has No Seal or Signature

A Kardex Printed With No Seal, Stamp or Signature

The client ordered a Mexican Kardex translation and asked us to translate it word per word. The two-page record comes from a public state university in Sonora, Mexico, and covers 57 courses in a health-sciences bachelor’s program. Neither page carries a seal, a stamp or a signature.

A Kardex (also spelled kárdex) is the running record of courses and grades a Mexican university keeps for each student, usually printed straight from its records system. Our country-by-country Spanish transcript guide sets it beside the other Mexican academic records.

A Certificado de Estudios is a different document: the official certificate of studies that the school signs and seals for use outside it. It is total once the program is complete and parcial before that. Neither one is the Título, the degree diploma itself.

This Kardex opens with the university logo, the academic unit’s name and code, and the title KARDEX. Four holder lines follow: Expediente (file number), Nombre (name), Programa Académico (academic program) and Plan de Estudios (study plan: the curriculum version the student follows).

A seven-column grid then lists the courses: Clave (code), Asignatura (course), Período (calendar term), Per Est, Oport, Calificación (grade) and Observación (remark). A totals block, a note on how the average is figured and a dated footer on each page close the record.

How We Translated the Kardex Word for Word

We first checked both pages for anything that could be a seal, stamp or signature. The only image on either page is the university logo. There is no signature line and no name or title of an issuing official.

We then translated both pages in full: the letterhead, the four holder lines, all seven column headings, all 57 course titles, the totals block, the note and both footers. Two names stayed in Spanish on purpose, each with its English rendering in parentheses: the title, KARDEX (ACADEMIC RECORD), and the degree name. That matches the standard WES publishes for translations: exact and word-for-word, with all text translated.

Keeping KARDEX in the title was the key decision. The English page names the document exactly as the Spanish one does, and the certificate calls it a translation of an Academic Record (Kardex). Nothing in the packet presents it as a certificate of studies.

We added nothing that is not on the page. The logo became a bracketed description with its motto in English. Because the Kardex has no seal or signature, the translation carries no seal or signature notes either.

Grades stayed exactly as printed, and each remark word was translated beside its grade. The Kardex prints a single Total de créditos (total credits) line but no credits column, so the English shows the same one total. The letter marks A and NA also stayed as printed, beside the record’s own note that leaves them out of the average.

Expert Note

"Translator’s Note: The fourth column heading appears in the original as the abbreviation «Per Est», which the document does not spell out; it is rendered here as «Student Term», matching its entries, which number the terms of the student’s program consecutively."

Mateo GarcíaSenior Immigration Translation Specialist

We chose Student Term because of what the column does. Its number rises by one each time the Período value changes. Where the Período column skips a calendar term, Per Est does not skip a number, so it counts the student’s own terms.

The note tells the reader that the expansion is ours, because the page never gives one. Oport, the next column, needed no note: it is the usual short form of oportunidad, the attempt at a course, so it became Attempt.

For the footer, we converted the issue time to the 12-hour clock and wrote p.m. only once. Under that rule, the invented 18:30:00 p. m. becomes 6:30:00 p.m., and another Translator’s Note records the original form.

The Outcome

CertTranslate delivered the certified Spanish-to-English translation in August 2026: two translated pages, a signed certificate with two Translator’s Notes, and a copy of the original Kardex. The client received a preview of the translation before the final delivery.

The client’s instruction to translate word per word was followed on every line. No receiver was named in the order, so the packet was certified to the USCIS standard (8 CFR 103.2(b)(3)). That means a complete translation plus the translator’s signed statement of accuracy and competence.