说到我国高校校名英文翻译的问题，“师范学院/师范大学”的英文翻译似乎成为了一个说不清理还乱的焦点问题。当前我国的“师范”类高等院校大多译为normal university/ college，例如“北京师范大学”的英文名为Beijing Normal University，然而多种英语词典（《朗文当代高级英语辞典》、《柯林斯COBUILD英语词典》和《牛津现代高级英汉双解词典》）都没有说明“normal”与“师范”有什么关系，相反，normal常让人联想到abnormal，因为既然这所大学要在校名中特别强调它是normal的，那也就意味着必定还存在abnormal的大学，这样的理解自然让人有些哭笑不得，因为由此而来的问题必然是：什么样的大学是abnormal的大学？
那么，我国的“师范”类高等院校的英文校名为何会是normal university/ college呢？在众多英文辞典没有做出解释的情况下，Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary（P.806）对normal school倒是提供了一个让人一目了然的解释：[the fact that the first French school so named was intended to serve as a model](1834):a usu. 2-year school for training chiefly elementary teachers。从上述释义不难推论出，1834年，法国建立了第一所培养教师的学校，为了给今后类似的学校提供一个示范，故名normal school。但是，即便是这一名称，从释义来看也通常只能是指培养小学教师的两年制师范学校，类似于我国的中等师范学校。而且，从国际惯例来看，高等师范院校现在无一在校名中采用normal 这一词语，即便是在其发源地法国。
著名的网络百科全书Wikipedia 对于normal school 的来历有着如下详细的解释：A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. Most such schools are now called teachers colleges, however in some places the term normal school is still used.
In 1685, Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, — that is, a school whose purpose is to train teachers — in Reims.
In New Zealand, for example, normal schools are affiliated with Teachers colleges. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.
In the United States, the function of normal school has been taken up by undergraduate and graduate schools of education. Many famous universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles were founded as normal schools. In Canada, such institutions are typically part of a university as the Faculty of Education offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies.
