How Latin Degree Titles Are Rendered in English

The mapping is not one-to-one

The same degree wears different Latin, and the same Latin covers different house styles. Artium Baccalaureus and Baccalaureus Artium are one degree — Bachelor of Arts — with the words in a different order; A.B. remains the house style at Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Georgetown precisely because those foundations have kept the older academic custom, while B.A. is the anglicized order common elsewhere. Scientiae Baccalaureus (S.B.) and Baccalaureus Scientiae (B.S.) are the same pattern in the sciences. A translator who treats each form as a separate credential invents degrees the holder does not have.

The full inventory of titles EnLatin has met on real diplomas — doctorates, master's degrees, bachelor's degrees, licentiates, honors classifications — lives in the degree-title reference table on the Latin desk. This page is about what happens after you have read the title.

The rendering hierarchy

When a certified translation renders a degree title, it applies three rules in order:

1. The institution's own English usage comes first. Universities that issue Latin diplomas almost always have an established English style — in their catalogs, registrars' letters, or their own translations. Where it exists, that usage governs: deferring to a named entity's own established self-designation, rather than inventing a fresh rendering, is standard professional translation doctrine — and the diploma is that institution's document.
2. Where no house usage exists, the standard international rendering applies — the forms collected in the reference table, which follow the conventions credential evaluators expect.
3. Literal and inflated renderings are never used. Baccalaureus rendered as "Master," an honoris causa rendered as earned, a field name silently upgraded — each changes what the credential claims.

What foreign-system evaluators see

Credential evaluation — WES, ECE, USCIS, university admissions — reads the rendered title against its own equivalence tables.

• The Italian laurea. WES's own published reasoning phrases the pre-Bologna laurea as "bachelor's plus one to two years of graduate study" — practically master's level, in the hedged framing an evaluator would actually write; a laurea magistrale under the Bologna system sits within it. The Latin on the diploma often says simply Laurea, and the rendering must carry which system the document belongs to.
• Licentiates. Sacrae Theologiae Licentiatus (S.T.L.) and Juris Canonici Licentiatus (J.C.L.) remain live post-graduate ecclesiastical degrees — the J.C.L. is described by name as the ordinary way of forming future canonists, and S.T.L. programs sit a full two years beyond both the S.T.B. and the M.Div. Rendering either as "bachelor," or dropping the licentiate grade, misstates a canonical rank.
• The civil-law doctorate family. Legum Doctor (LL.D.) is earned in Germany's equivalent framing, in South Africa, in a handful of Canadian law doctorates, and as a UK/Commonwealth higher doctorate by publication — while the Commonwealth convention of substituting an LL.D. for a research doctorate specifically when the degree is honorary is well attested. In the anglophone world it is read as honorary by default; context — the rest of the diploma — decides.
• Degrees by status. Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin confer a Master of Arts by standing rather than by further examination — Cambridge's own registrar page states the MA there "is not available as a postgraduate qualification." The diploma's Latin says Magister, and the rendering must not imply coursework that did not occur.

Honorary versus earned

Latin marks the distinction, and the marker must survive translation. Earned degrees name the field of study; honorary degrees carry honoris causa or house formulas such as in Scientia Honoris, and their diplomas often differ in apparatus — no dissertation mention, no field examination. An honorary doctorate rendered as earned is a false credential; an earned one rendered as honorary undersells it. Either error is visible to an evaluator in one line.

Traps that change the credential

• A.M. is Artium Magister, not ante meridiem. A system that expands abbreviations by frequency supplies "before noon" on a conferral line.
• Phrases that are not titles. Artium Baccalaurei Deferri is the passive infinitive "the Bachelor of Arts to be conferred" — an act, not a qualification. Rendering it as a degree invents one. (The desk treats these at the reference table.)
• Field names are part of the credential — and real ones are messier than textbook Latin. The same bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering appears on real diplomas as both Baccalaureus Scientiae Ingeniariae Mechanicae and Baccalaureus Scientiae Machinalis — same abbreviation (B.S.M.E.), two Latin fields, two established English renderings. Polish usage abbreviates Magister as Mgr., not M.A. And field names on real diplomas are often non-standard, sometimes outright ungrammatical: where no established rendering exists, the choice is a philologist's judgment, recorded in the certification — not a lookup-table formality.
• The in + ablative vs. genitive forms (Magister in Artibus vs. Artium Magister) are house-style variants, not different degrees — as are the doubled-letter abbreviations (LL. = legum, genitive plural, not a typo).

What the certified translation delivers

The rendered English title, chosen by the hierarchy above; the Latin original preserved in the layout exactly as issued; and, where the receiving authority's requirements are known, the wording its equivalence tables expect. The certification statement — signed by the senior philologist, with a verifiable order code — is what makes the rendering actionable for registrars and evaluators.

Why machine translation gets titles wrong

• Abbreviations expand by frequency: A.M. becomes "before noon"; S.T.L. becomes expansions no faculty uses.
• House-style variants are flattened or hallucinated: A.B. and B.A. merged, or a plausible-sounding but nonexistent title invented.
• Honorary markers are dropped silently, converting an honoris causa into an earned doctorate.
• Field names are paraphrased out of the evaluator's equivalence table.

A certified translation renders the credential the holder actually has — which is what registrars and evaluators check.

How should a Latin degree title be translated?

Is Artium Baccalaureus the same as a BA?

How do you tell an honorary doctorate from an earned one in Latin?

Do credential evaluators accept translated Latin degree titles?