A Russian friend of mine is filling out a form from the US government, and she’s being asked to list her educational history. She’s not sure how to translate the name of her school, which is “Муниципальное общеобразовательное учреждение средняя общеобразовательная школа №2”. She says the school was run by the city and that she attended from ages 6 to 17. On this basis, and because the first word looks like “municipal”, I suggested “Municipal Secondary Education School #2”. But as I don’t speak Russian myself I thought maybe someone here who is more familiar with the language and Russian education system could give some advice.
If there’s a distinction between public and private schools, then why wouldn’t the translation be “Public High School #2” instead of just “High School #2”?
I don’t think it matters all that much. There really weren’t any private schools in the Soviet Union which is when this institution was named.
If you really wanted you could say (whatever city) Public High School Number 2. Within the municipal department of education, there is only going to be one High School #2. So its not like anyone will be confused as long as you get the city and the number correct.
I think it’s a bit of nitpicking: both are possible
but you wouldn’t normally emphasise Public/Private distinction on your resume/visa application due to the fact that the status of the school being public or private is irrelevant in this context.
Better yet to write
Novosibirsk (or whatever) High School N2
I’ve done a little Googling on the term средняя общеобразовательная школа, and the websites I’ve found for institutions bearing that name seem to incorporate classes that an English-speaking audience would consider much earlier than high school (as low as 5th grade in some cases). This link on ProZ (a useful website for professional translators) shows that ‘secondary school’ in Russia generally comprises grades 7 to 12 - what we’d consider middle and high school. Based on that, I think your best bet would be “[City name] Municipal secondary school No. 2”.
I think that probably looks like it’d be the best bet too. (although as ToughLife says, I guess the municipal could be optional as to whether you put it in or not, may not matter much either way)
My giant Oxford Russian Dictionary has the following under the entry for средний :
(Not looked up all of these, but here’s what google translate gives for each of those, which looks like it’s probably about right:
общее образование = Basic General Education
аттестат об основном общем образовании = Certificate of Basic Education
среднее (полное) общее образование = secondary (complete) general education
аттестат о среднем (полном) общем образовании = Certificate of Secondary (complete) general education)
общеобразовательный apparently means “of general education”
Which one have you got? I just went to check my Oxford and it’s got nothing like that in the entry. Clearly the version you have is something I could use in my work.
Fourth Edition, published 2007 - I think it’s the latest one (we picked it up at the start of this year)
I don’t think too many of the entries have those little fact-box thingies near them, but occasionally it might have a little box giving some context where you might see a couple of words together and still not know what it was talking about (e.g. just flicking through it, I see near the entry for ‘great’ in the russian section, it also has a little box translating ‘great patriotic war’ and a line or so underneath saying that this refers to the soviet involvement in ww2 from 1941-45. Also does a similar thing for a couple of the public holidays etc)