Not exactly a poor translation, more like the word exists in English with this meaning, but is used much more scarcely than in my own language. I vote for the revitalization of Latin as a Lingua Franca: science would be much easier for the common folk if they knew how crude the metaphors the words it's made of are. Blastula: small seed. Blastoid: thing that resembles a seed. Zygote: egg. Ovule: egg. Etc.
Eeer... I mean, like, when you aren't writing for peers but for other people so they can access the fruit of your research without all the travelling though the inferential distances.
I think they call it "popular science" or something, but I never liked that term, it it kinda evokes the image of scientists selling records of their lectures and churning out "science videos"...
Actually that'd be kinda cool, now that I think of it.. #mind wanders offtopic to the tune of MC Hawking*
The word you want in English is popularization. (Which, you'll note, is also Latin-derived!)
Basically this: "Eliezer Yudkowsky writes and pretends he's an AI researcher but probably hasn't written so much as an Eliza bot."
While the Eliezer S. Yudkowsky site has lots of divulgation articles and his work on rationality is of indisputable value, I find myself at a loss when I want to respond to this. Which frustrates me very much.
So, to avoid this sort of situation in the future, I have to ask: What did the man, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, actually accomplish in his own field?
Please don't downvote the hell out of me, I'm just trying to create a future reference for this sort of annoyance.