Nova Prospekt is Latin, or derived from Latin. Prospekt means looking out (ahead in the future). I hope you see how this thus just means prospect in English. New Prospect.
Speculation: It’s the name for a (the) prison, but like in WW2, the people don’t know it’s a prison, they think it’s some rehab center or something similar. People with opposing thoughts get in, they probably get brainwashed or something, and then hey come out as new, with good thoughts, acting like model citizens. From the outside, it looks like all is well.
It’s named New Prospect because the combine probably advertises it as a good thing. Maybe you have to through it to get to live in C17 or something. Either way, it tries to make the people believe that it gives people the prospect of a new, good life. 1948 anyone?
It’s all about propaganda. (it’s not a good idea to call something like this “Dead End” when you want to keep up the appearance of something good, now it? 
)
I hope I’m a bit of understandable…
Please do not move this to rumors & speculation. This thread is about the translation/meaning of the name. (I speculated to give the translation some meaning)
I’m tired of all the people using Babelfish to translate it from german. It is true that a Prospekt is a brochure (facts folder.. stupid Babelfish) in German, but Nova isn’t a German word.
And if this gets moved, the newbies probably don’t get to see it. And those are the ones that need to get informed of this
In addition to this, for the second test people: I doubt it has any meaning to the test, other than its name in HL2. They could just as easily have used city/17 or black/mesa or Gordon/freeman.
The sentence in bold fits in perfectly with the train station level. Remember the bit where Nova Prospekt is on that wall or something. Near that, there is that place where that combined guard took u to. In the area, you see this guy locked in a cell, been integrated and you go into the next door. You are most likely going to get brainwashed (well, tried to) and so it fits in the meaning of Nova Prospekt.
First, you should notice that it seems only MEN are being sent towards the Nova Prospekt/Security side. Just ahead of Gordon, a woman passes through a different door whereas the two men both go the same way. The first is sent through the security door. The second is sent to ‘Nova Prospekt’.
Also, you can see some device at the head of the chairs. These could be brainwashers or mind readers, I don’t really know. It would be a good way for Gordon to have his first flashback at any rate. (I believe there was something said about flashbacks?)
Also, if Gordon has been active in the world and his memories are missing, perhaps what happened to the “Something in the water” guy has happened to him.
Nova Prospekt could be a combination of different languages. Remember that this happens in the future and the Combine could have a poor grasp of language. Or, Language, in general, could have started to be combined to some degree by then naturally.
Nova and Prospekt are each fairly recognizable and could have been chosen just because they would give the impression Valve wanted without just using English. Sort of giving it a Foreign flavor for everyone, since it’s not strictly from one language.
