akademicheskaia zadolzhennost'

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Joe Peschio wrote:

> For Paul Gallagher:
>
> Unfortunately, I can't read your cyrillic,

Yes, a fatal flaw that makes Eudora unusable for me, working with
Cyrillic on a daily basis as I do. YMMV.

> but I gather you're asking about "akademicheskaia zadolzhennost'".

Yes. This should be obvious from the subject line, which you have kindly
retyped in your own transliteration system. :-)

> This is the official term for what students call "khvosty" - exams not
> passed/not taken OR "zachety, kotorye ne postavili" (which could be
> either a (oral OR written) test/quiz not passed, or a paper not
> submitted/not accepted by an official or negotiated deadline).  For
> example: Students are commonly abroad in June and don't take any exams
> during the spring "sessiia" - they carry an outstanding
> "akademicheskaia zadolzhennost'" until they pass all exams and do all
> the "zachety", which has to be done by a certain date in fall under
> threat of expulsion.  Even more commonly, students don't pass exams or
> "zachety" the first time around in spring and carry the "khvosty" over
> into fall, which gives them a chance to read the books they were
> supposed to.  This is a natural result of 1. the fact that Russian
> students often have to pass up to 20 subjects in one semester,
> frequently without ever having attended class for some of the
> subjects, 2. most Russian professors allow up to 3 re-takes, and 3.
> exam season is consequently still pretty chaotic in most Russian
> institutions.  "Khvosty" from the winter "sessiia" are comparatively
> rare.
>
> In English, I would suggest "incomplete".  The plural form is also
> used in American universities (e.g., in April: "Papers, what papers?
> I'm taking four incompletes, man.").  The verb "pogasit'" is used to
> denote "clearing an incomplete".  It's possible that the transcript
> you're looking at doesn't indicate whether they did that or not.

Thank you for your explanation and suggestion. The consensus seems to be
"incomplete," and "deadline for removal of incompletes (if any)" for the
entire phrase.

Actually, of the 51 courses taken over six semesters, none of them lists
anything under the questioned term, "Srok likvidatsii akademicheskoy
zadolzhennosti (yesli ona imeyetsya)."

> I should qualify by saying that I know this is how the jargon works in
> contemporary Russian academic-ese in the humanities and at law schools.
> It might have meant something different in 1989 at a different kind of
> institution.

A med school, as it happens.

> I also gather (again, I can't be certain) that you're asking about the
> difference between "zachety" and "ekzameny".

Yes. This should be clear from the other responses to my query, some of
which are in transliteration.

> The difference is that the former have a deadline during the semester,
> whereas the deadlines for the latter (and "kursovye") are during the
> "sessiia" after classes end.  "Zachet" refers to *any* evaluation
> instrument - book reports, quizzes, "beseda na temu", design projects,
> etc. etc.

That seems broader than would suit my purpose. For each course, the
transcript has a column for ekzamen and a column for zachet, and all the
zachety are completed (with "zachet," of course), whereas some (20/51)
of the ekzameny are completed ("otl./khor./ud.") and most (31/51) are
left blank. So it seems that as used here, the "zachet" column does not
refer to any and all evaluation instruments (there would have to be
multiple entries for many courses).

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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