Syllabus and Course Description Translation - The Curriculum That Decides Professional Recognition and Credit Transfer

What a syllabus or course description is, and why bodies ask for it

A course description (syllabus, "silabusi", Modulbeschreibung, programme de cours, programma del corso, "uchebnaya programma") sets out for a single course its title and code, its credits and contact hours by type (lectures, seminars, laboratory, clinical practice), its prerequisites, its learning outcomes, its content week by week or topic by topic, its assessment methods and its reading list; the curriculum ("saswavlo gegma", Studienordnung, piano di studi, "uchebny plan") is the program-level document listing every course with its hours and credits by semester. Professional licensing bodies ask for them because the diploma and transcript show what was studied but not in what depth: a medical council needs to know how many hours of clinical pharmacology, pathology and surgery a graduate completed and what they covered, an engineering chamber needs the mathematics, mechanics and design content, a teachers' council needs the pedagogy and practice hours, a bar association needs the substantive law courses. Universities ask for them when transferring credits, so that a faculty can decide whether a course taken elsewhere matches its own, and recognition bodies ask for them in specific recognition procedures where the level or field is in question.

Medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy curricula

The largest curriculum flow in either direction is medical. Georgian medical graduates - and the far larger number of international graduates of Georgian medical faculties from India, Nigeria, Central Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia - present their curricula to the licensing bodies of the countries where they intend to practise: India's National Medical Commission, the Nigerian medical council, the licensing bodies of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, Germany's Approbation authorities, Italy's and Spain's ministries, Norway's and Finland's health authorities, the Malaysian Medical Council, the Gulf licensing bodies and others, each of which examines the curriculum against its own requirements for hours and content by subject; foreign medical graduates coming to Georgia present theirs to the Georgian licensing process. We translate medical curricula with physician translators, render subject names as the receiving country's medical faculties name them, preserve hours by type exactly, keep terminology consistent across the whole curriculum with a glossary agreed at the start, and deliver long curricula as a team on the body's schedule. Dental, nursing, midwifery and pharmacy curricula are handled the same way, with the corresponding specialists.

Engineering, law, teaching and other regulated fields

Engineering chambers and boards - Germany's, Italy's Ordine degli Ingegneri, Portugal's and Spain's, Turkey's, Canada's provincial associations, the Gulf engineering councils - assess foreign engineering degrees by curriculum content, and engineers translate curricula with engineer translators who know the disciplines; bar associations and law faculties assessing foreign law degrees for qualification or further study ask for the substantive law courses described, translated by legal specialists; teachers' councils and education ministries assessing foreign teaching qualifications ask for pedagogy, methodology and practice hours, translated by educators; and architects, psychologists, veterinarians, accountants and other regulated professionals meet the same requirement from their bodies. In each case we assign translators who know the field, agree the terminology before bulk work begins, and produce a curriculum that reads as a specialist in the receiving country would write it.

Credit transfer and admission to further study

Students transferring between universities, and graduates applying for master's and doctoral programs in a different field or system, present course descriptions so that the receiving faculty can match courses to its own and decide what to recognize and what to require; foreign students transferring to Georgian universities present their descriptions for the same purpose, and Georgian students transferring abroad present theirs. These translations are shorter than a full curriculum - typically the descriptions of the courses for which credit is sought - and are read by academics rather than licensing officers, so the emphasis is on accurate content and learning outcomes rather than on hours by type. We translate the selected descriptions with the course titles rendered consistently with the transcript, and we advise students on which descriptions a faculty is likely to want.

Consistency, terminology and team delivery

A curriculum is long - a medical curriculum runs to several hundred pages - and it is judged on consistency: a subject named one way in the curriculum, another in the transcript and a third in the diploma supplement raises doubts, and a body reading hundreds of pages notices when a term drifts. We build a glossary for each curriculum before translation starts, agree it with the client or the university where possible, and enforce it across every translator on the team with translation memory; we render course titles identically in the curriculum, the transcript and the supplement; we preserve the numbering, the hours tables and the structure exactly so that a body can find each subject; and a subject-specialist reviewer reads the whole document for terminology and a second reader checks every hours figure. Large curricula are delivered by a team on an agreed schedule, in the original format, with a certified translation for the body and notarization of the whole document where the body requires it.

Pricing, timing and how to order

Syllabi and curricula are priced per page at the specialist tariff, which reflects subject-specialist translators and glossary work, with a modest supplement for rare languages; notarization is charged per act and, for long documents bound as one, once for the whole; the apostille, where a body requires it on the curriculum, at the state fee plus handling. A set of course descriptions is translated in one to three business days; a full curriculum on an agreed schedule, typically one to three weeks for a medical curriculum with a team.

To order, send the curriculum or the course descriptions as PDFs on WhatsApp, Telegram or email, and tell us the licensing body, university or recognition body and the country; we reply within the hour with a fixed quote, a schedule and the glossary approach, and we ask for the university's confirmation of hours where the body will want it. Delivery is by email in the original format, with notarized paper copies collected at Agmashenebeli 117, near Marjanishvili Metro, or couriered anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

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