That’s why it’s probably not a good idea.
You can look at https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/config/locales/client.en.yml to see all of them, so you could then fix them in the ux but the name of the thing you want to customize. You might do it in a plugin if you’re self hosted, or maybe contrive to do it with the API. But maybe your users won’t be confused by the word topic and you can avoid doing that.