I found this interesting. Finnish is also language of about 5 million speakers, but we have a commonly used natural translation of “economies of scale” (mittakaavaetu, “benefit of scale”). Any commonplace obvious translation for “Single point of failure” didn’t strike my mind, so I googled, and found engineering MSc thesis works and similar documents: the words they choose to use included yksittäinen kriittinen prosessi (“single critical process”, most natural one IMO), yksittäinen vikaantumispiste (“single point of failure”, literal translation and a bit clumsy one), yksittäinen riskikohde (“single object of risk”, makes sense but only in the context), and several phrases that chose to explain the concept.
Small languages need active caretaking and cultivation so that translations of novel concepts are introduced, and then there is active intellectual life where they are used. In Finnish, this work has been done for “economies of scale”, but less efficiently for “single point of failure”. But I believe one could use any of the translations I found or invent ones own, maybe add the English term in parenthesis, and not look like a crackpot. (Because I would expect quite a few people are familiar with the concept with its English name. In a verbal argument I would expect a politician just say it in English if they didn’t know an established equivalent in Finnish. Using English is fancy and high-status in Finland in the way French was fancy and high-status in the 19th century.)
In another comment you make a comparison to LW concepts like Moloch. [1] I think the idea of “cultivation” is also applicable to LW shibboleths too, especially in the context of the old tagline “rising the sanity waterline”. It is useful to have a good language—or very least, good words for important concepts. (And also maybe avoid promoting words for concepts that are not well thought-out.) Making such words common requires active work, which includes care in choice of words that are descriptive/good-sounding and good judgement to choose words and use-patterns that they can become popular and make it to common use without sounding crackpot-ish. (In-group shibboleths can become a failure mode.)
Lack of such work is obvious sooner in small languages than in larger ones, but even large language with many speakers, like English, miss words for every concept they have not yet adopted a word for.
In Iceland, much smaller language, I have heard they translate and localize everything.
I found this interesting. Finnish is also language of about 5 million speakers, but we have a commonly used natural translation of “economies of scale” (mittakaavaetu, “benefit of scale”). Any commonplace obvious translation for “Single point of failure” didn’t strike my mind, so I googled, and found engineering MSc thesis works and similar documents: the words they choose to use included yksittäinen kriittinen prosessi (“single critical process”, most natural one IMO), yksittäinen vikaantumispiste (“single point of failure”, literal translation and a bit clumsy one), yksittäinen riskikohde (“single object of risk”, makes sense but only in the context), and several phrases that chose to explain the concept.
Small languages need active caretaking and cultivation so that translations of novel concepts are introduced, and then there is active intellectual life where they are used. In Finnish, this work has been done for “economies of scale”, but less efficiently for “single point of failure”. But I believe one could use any of the translations I found or invent ones own, maybe add the English term in parenthesis, and not look like a crackpot. (Because I would expect quite a few people are familiar with the concept with its English name. In a verbal argument I would expect a politician just say it in English if they didn’t know an established equivalent in Finnish. Using English is fancy and high-status in Finland in the way French was fancy and high-status in the 19th century.)
In another comment you make a comparison to LW concepts like Moloch. [1] I think the idea of “cultivation” is also applicable to LW shibboleths too, especially in the context of the old tagline “rising the sanity waterline”. It is useful to have a good language—or very least, good words for important concepts. (And also maybe avoid promoting words for concepts that are not well thought-out.) Making such words common requires active work, which includes care in choice of words that are descriptive/good-sounding and good judgement to choose words and use-patterns that they can become popular and make it to common use without sounding crackpot-ish. (In-group shibboleths can become a failure mode.)
Lack of such work is obvious sooner in small languages than in larger ones, but even large language with many speakers, like English, miss words for every concept they have not yet adopted a word for.
In Iceland, much smaller language, I have heard they translate and localize everything.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zSbrbiNmNp87eroHN/the-cage-of-the-language?commentId=rCWFaLH5FLoH8WKQK