When the Issuing University's Letterhead Has a Typo

What We Received

A client submitted two source documents from Universidad de Ibagué, a private university in Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia. The package included a five-year Industrial Engineering academic transcript covering terms 2010A through 2015A and a one-page Industrial Engineer diploma conferred in September 2016. Both were needed for a USCIS filing and a credential evaluation.

The transcript header reads the same on both of its pages. It cites 'PERSONERÍA JURÍDICA RESOLUCIÓN No 1867 DE 1981 MINISTERIO DE EDCUACION NACIONAL REPUBLICA DE COLOMBIA'. The diploma header on the same institution's letterhead reads 'PERSONERÍA JURÍDICA RESOLUCIÓN No. 1867 DE 1981 DEL MINISTERIO DE EDUCACIÓN NACIONAL DE LA REPÚBLICA DE COLOMBIA'. The word 'EDUCACIÓN' is misspelled 'EDCUACION' on the transcript and spelled correctly on the diploma.

The client's identifier varies in surface form across the two documents. The diploma renders the Colombian Cédula de Ciudadanía with dot-separators — the standard Colombian notation. The transcript renders the same number without separators.

How We Handled It

We translated both header phrases to the same English form on both documents — 'MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA'. We used the correct intended spelling, not the source's typo. We did not transcribe 'Edcuacion' into the English body, because the transliteration carries no English meaning and would read as a translation error. We added a Translator's Note to the [certified translation of the Colombian academic transcript](/documents/transcripts) documenting the typo verbatim.

Expert Note

"The original document contains a typographical error in the header on both pages — 'MINISTERIO DE EDCUACION NACIONAL' — in which the letters in 'EDUCACIÓN' are transposed. The translation reflects the correct intended form, 'MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION'."

Mateo GarcíaSenior Immigration Translation Specialist

The note tells a USCIS reviewer two things at once. First, that the source–translation discrepancy exists because of a printing error in the original — not because of a translation choice. Second, that the translator inspected the typo, located it precisely, and chose not to silently correct it. The certified translation discloses the error without altering the original's appearance.

For cross-document consistency, we aligned both translations on the institution's English name and the program name ('Industrial Engineering'). The diploma preserves the Colombian dot-separator notation of the Cédula de Ciudadanía verbatim because that is how it appears on the original. The transcript preserves the un-separated form. Matching Translator's Notes on both pages point each rendering at the other, so the two surface forms reconcile to one identifier rather than two.

The Outcome

Both certified translations were delivered together — transcript and diploma — for the client's USCIS filing. The transcript's Translator's Note made the source-document typo explicit and pre-empted the question a Spanish-reading adjudicator would otherwise raise. The cross-document notes reconciled the two surface forms of the Cédula de Ciudadanía to a single identifier.

We treat any multi-document package from a single foreign institution as one job. We have applied the same approach to other Latin American university packets where a registrar's template carried a typo or an inconsistent abbreviation. The [Spanish translation services](/languages/spanish) team has handled similar Colombian sets since 2022 without a Request for Evidence on the letterhead discrepancy.