The sentence that took me three hours

I was translating a technical manual for a medical device when I hit a phrase: 'the system reverts to nominal operation upon fault resolution.' I sat with it for ages. 'Nominal' felt wrong—too vague, too passive. Then I found the original German: 'normaler Betrieb'. Not 'nominal', not 'standard', but 'normal'. It’s not about configuration; it’s about state. The system doesn’t just return to a setting—it returns to how it should be, like breathing after holding your breath. I changed it. It felt like fixing a crack in the air.