English Translation
The problem was money.
Without context, there is no reason to reverse the translation. Better to use ‘Money was the problem’.
There’s no reason to reverse the translation—nor is there any reason not to reverse the translation, in this context.
BTW if anything, it’s the Finnish sentence here that should be reversed.
Word order in Finnish often makes the distinction made in English by “a” vs. “the”. For instance, M[in]ulla on pyyhe means “I have a towel”, but Pyyhe on minulla means “I have the towel” (= the only towel / a recently mentioned towel).
In the same way, Raha oli ongelma would ordinarily mean “Money is a problem”. If money is the (one and only, and/or previously mentioned) problem, then that would be better expressed by Ongelma oli raha.
2 Likes