Translation Difficulties: Normal or Usual?

Abstract

The article deals with the history of the Russian word “normalny” (normal, regular, sane) and its use in Russian for the last two centuries. The authors draw the attention of translators and foreign students of Russian to the necessity of being very careful when using this lexical unit, which sounds very much like its English analogue. Basing their findings on the National Corps of Russian, the authors trace the historical meaning of the word, periods of its active usage, usage peculiarities and its correlation with the lexical unit “obychny” (usual, normal, ordinary, regular).

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