This paper sets out to examine some aspects of the translation of Spanish academic transcripts into English. The author’s comments are drawn from several years’ experience not only of translating these documents and working in close collaboration with professional translators in Spain (sworn translators), but also of using these documents as texts in the training of translators at the Faculty of Translating and Interpreting at the University of Granada. Such texts form an integral part of the course on translation of legal documents, and highlight the need to work not only between different legal systems, but also between different education systems. The cultural differences which pose translation problems in these texts help the students to understand their role as intermediaries, not between languages but between cultures, systems, and ways of measuring the world around us.