[siftrics]

In Russian, работа simply means "work" or "job" without any negative connotation.

[hippich]

Yet "раб" is translated as "slave"..

[WesolyKubeczek]

In Bulgarian, a slave is „роб”.

[tomashubelbauer]

Same with Polish, but in Czech where the word originates from, there is a difference and normal work is called "práce" not "robota" which is reserved for forced labor or as an in-jest name for work.

[andrewshadura]

In Slovak, robota is apparently more like in Polish, it's commonly used to mean a job, sometimes as manual work, only historically for forced labour.

[meepmorp]

Russian isn't Czech and there are a lot of false cognates between the two.

[pvg]

These aren't false cognates though, they're actual cognates. Cognates can have different meanings. You might be thinking of 'false friends'.

[hirsin]

Interestingly, the Chernobyl liquidators forced to clean the roof were referred to as robots. I think the TV series expanded that to "bio robots", but books about the incident from tbe nineties simply used robot.

[yread]

I like vonet and pachnout