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Short N2 level sentence to be translated

Thanks! Glad I got this close. 不吉そうに, perhaps "as something sinister". I kind of realized that after the fact as well, that there is nothing in terms of a verb the sentence to suggest that the actions are being done to "ward off" anything. Thus, I am still a bit confused about this 不吉そうに、particularly the に aspect.
 
"Not just excessively neurotic people, but unexpectedly many people do things, such as when they see a hearse, hide their thumbs to ward of sinister luck or not cut their nails in the middle of the night."
I am glad you stuck with it!
The part following the final は is the part being stressed. That is, the sentence is stressing the fact that there are more of such people than would be expected. I would translate the sentence in a way that keeps the stress on that point. There are many ways to do this. One example (taking a few liberties to produce natural-sounding English) would be:
"there are a surprisingly large number of otherwise "normal" (i.e., not particularly neurotic) people who do things such as ..."
 
Thanks! Glad I got this close. 不吉そうに, perhaps "as something sinister". I kind of realized that after the fact as well, that there is nothing in terms of a verb the sentence to suggest that the actions are being done to "ward off" anything. Thus, I am still a bit confused about this 不吉そうに、particularly the に aspect.
They hide their thumbs not to ward off sinister luck, but because seeing a hearse is a sinister sign. 不吉そうに is an adverbial phrase describing the appearance/state they look like. I would use "in a sinister matter".
 
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