Five most common translation mistakes
Five errors account for most of the translations sent back by Québec and Canadian authorities: converted grades, translated institution names, dropped seals, drifting name spellings and missing pages. None of them is a language error, and all five are avoidable before the work starts.
Checked on 8 September 2026 Last updated 9 September 2026
In brief
- Certification level
- Certified translator (Québec)
- Estimated time
- Each of these errors costs a full processing cycle to correct
- Destination country
- Québec
Accepted under conditions
Translations of Turkish documents are rarely sent back because the English or French is wrong. They are sent back because of five recurring decisions, four of which look like helpfulness. Knowing them in advance is the difference between one submission and two.
1. Grades converted to a Canadian scale
A Turkish transcript carries a grade point average on its own scale, and a translator who converts it to a four-point scale is doing the evaluating body's job with none of the evaluating body's information. The receiving officer compares the translation with the original, sees a number that is not on the source document, and treats the whole translation as unreliable. Grades are transferred exactly as printed, including the scale legend on the reverse of the sheet. The page on grade conversion explains who is entitled to do the arithmetic.
2. Institution names turned into English or French
A university, a ministry directorate or a registry office has one legal name, and it is the name the receiving body will use when it verifies the document. Translating it produces a name that exists nowhere: not on the diploma, not in the institution's own correspondence, not in any register. The convention is to keep the original name and add an explanation in brackets, which is set out on the institution names page.
3. Seals, stamps and the apostille left out
This one is the largest single cause of incomplete-file letters, and it is invisible to the applicant because the sentences all appear to be there. A document is the whole sheet: the round seal, the notarial note in small type on the reverse, the registry number written by hand, the barcode caption, the apostille attached at the back. Everything on the page belongs in the translation, described in the position it occupies. The seals page lists the marks that go missing most often.
4. Name spelling that drifts across the file
Turkish letters have no single settled Latin transcription, so the same person can appear three ways across a diploma, a registry extract and a passport. Authorities read a mismatch as a possible identity problem rather than as a typing habit. The passport is the reference for every document in the set, and a genuine difference in the source is explained in a translator's note rather than quietly corrected. See the name spelling page.
5. Missing pages, missing sides
Reverse sides that look blank almost never are: they carry a stamp, a continuation, a grading legend or a notarial certification. Multi-page documents lose their last sheet in the scanner. Marginal annotations on civil status records — a marriage, a divorce, a change of name — are exactly the lines the authority is checking, and they sit where people crop the image. Scan flat, in colour, both sides, every page.
What the five have in common
Four of them are attempts to be helpful: making the document easier for a Canadian reader by converting, translating, tidying or trimming. The officer is not looking for a readable summary; they are looking for a faithful account of a foreign document they cannot read. Anything in the translation that is not on the original, and anything on the original that is not in the translation, breaks that correspondence.
What it costs to get one of them wrong
Normally a request for further documents and a lost processing cycle; in a file with a deadline, the deadline. The translation has to be produced again, and the second one costs the same as the first. What happens when a translation is rejected follows the sequence through.
What we do on the Turkish side
Four of the five are settled before anyone translates anything, and that is the part we handle from Ankara: obtaining the document in a form where the seals exist and are legible, taking it through the apostille where the receiving body asks for one, checking that the name on the record matches the passport and arranging a name concordance certificate where it does not, and sending you a complete colour scan of every side alongside the couriered original. Run the finished set past the Québec checklist before you submit.
Frequently asked questions
It is the most common way a good translation is spoiled. Even as a bracketed note, a converted figure is an assessment, and assessment belongs to the body that evaluates your studies. If you want the comparison, ask for it from the evaluating body, where it will carry weight.
Include it, and let the translator note that it is blank. A gap in the page numbering raises a question the officer cannot answer from the file, and answering it costs more than the extra scan did.
Neither, in the translation. The translation reproduces what each document says. The mismatch is resolved on the Turkish side, usually with a document from the registry confirming that the two spellings refer to the same person, which is then submitted alongside.
You can check most of what matters without reading it. Put the scan and the translation side by side and confirm that every seal, date, number and annotation on the original has something corresponding to it, that names match your passport, and that the page count is the same.