akademicheskaia zadolzhennost'

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Thanks to Edward Dumanis, Alina Israeli, Joe Peschio, Katarina Peitlova,
and John Dunn for all your helpful, insightful comments and
explanations.

My apologies for my apparent silence yesterday in response to several
helpful posts. I forgot and ran up against that *&^%*%^ three-message
limit. No rudeness intended.

Responses to messages to which I have not yet responded, consolidated in
order to stay within the limit (this is my third and last message
today):

John Dunn wrote (privately):

> I take your point about the lack of equivalence between exam/test
> and ekzamen/zachet, but that terminological distinction does seem
> to have become established. I have literally just finished reading
> an application for post-graduate study in which the translator of
> the diploma has adopted those versions, and I have come across it
> on many other occasions.  It is not necessarily unreasonable: the
> usage of the Russian terms is not totally dissimilar to the way
> in which the terms 'exam' and 'class test' are used, at least in
> this University.

Perhaps that explains why it has come to be used this way -- that the
British usage of "test" varies from the American, and many Russians have
learned the British form of the language. On the other hand, as I am
translating for an American readership unfamiliar with this usage, I
think it would fail as a translation.

> That raises another problem, the lack of standardisation in English
> of academic terminology, especially in the U.K.  Before the start
> of this correspondence I had never heard the term 'incomplete' used
> in this sense.  This is probably irrelevant to you, but a
> translation into British English of the zadolzhennosti phrase would
> have to be something like: 'date by which all reassessments must be
> completed'.

Here, too, the British and American terminologies are so different and
unfamiliar to one another as to be incomprehensible. I would be
completely baffled by "reassessments" and have to consult a Brit before
I had the slightest idea what you were talking about.

FWIW, the American usage comes from an underlying understanding that in
order to earn a grade for a course, a student must complete a specified
set of requirements (e.g., write two term papers, take a midterm and
final exam, etc.). If some of those requirements are not met (completed)
for good cause, the student may obtain the instructor's permission to
complete them at a later date. In such cases, a temporary grade of
"incomplete" is listed pending the student's completion of the
requirements.

Alina Israeli wrote:

[quoting me:]
> >OK, this makes good sense, but I struggle to accept the contrast
> >"exam/test" = "экзамен/зачет" because the English pair does not
> >convey the contrast you outline here.
>
> As a rule, зачет - zachet precedes the exam, and pertains to the
> practical side of the course. Without passing the "zachet" one will
> not be admitted to the oral exam. So if the zachet part is
> "akademichaskaja zadolzhennost'" (incomplete) or in student's
> parlance "xvost", the whole course is an incomplete.

For my purpose in translating the column headings, the scheduling and
dependencies are not very important. I wish to capture the essential
difference between "экзамен," a test covering the student's theoretical
knowledge, and "зачет," a test covering the student's practical skills.
And for me as an American, "exam/test" does not capture that essential
difference, because an American student or academic will not immediately
(or perhaps ever) differentiate those terms as theoretical vs.
practical. He is much more likely to contrast them as major vs. minor.

> The other difference is that exams are always for a grade, while all
> zachety correspond to the American pass/fail system - zachet vs.
> nezachet.
>
> There are accasionally "less important" course for which there would
> not be an exam, only zachet, so it less demanding as far as
> evaluation, maybe no oral examination, or maybe there would be one,
> but it would be called "zachet". In this case it corresponds exactly
> to the pass/fail system.

Yes and no. I had experiences with VERY important courses such as 12
hours of independent study for the purpose of writing a thesis, and
those courses were graded pass/fail. Then again, there are also
situations where a course may be effectively pass/fail but on paper it
appears to be ABCDF: if you pass, you get an A, and if you fail, you get
maybe a C and are washed out of the program. Or you may get an
"incomplete" if your advisor is kind and wants to give you another shot
to fix it.

Edward Dumanis concurred with Alina Israeli's last two paragraphs, and
added (privately):

> So, "зачет" sometimes has nothing to do with practical exams.

OK, so how would you say, "сдал зачёт с отметкой ╚зачёт╩"?
        (Or is that too redundant even for Russian bureaucratese?)
"Passed the test with a grade of 'pass' "? -- sounds awful in English...

How about "сдал экзамен с отметкой ╚отлично╩"?
"Passed the exam with a grade of 'excellent' "?

--
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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