In German, the common expression "Rahmenbedingungen" (used both as plural and singular) relates, for example, to a set of conditions necessary for a business idea to work out (e.g. low taxes and wages for successfully introducing and manufacturing a new product). Mostly these conditions have to be implemented/managed by a 3rd person, external authority or surroundings, so that the business/political idea can work out. In that sense, it's not a pre- but a side-condition. So you can already start to make your idea real, knowing that, for example, a soon change of business laws will realize this necessary side-conditions.
Linguee gives out different phrases and expressions for the German counterpart. I would have thought this to be a rather unique and common expression in English too, as you use and need it in many contexts (technology, business, politics, etc.). Maybe I should simply stop using Linguee for finding expressions, as it's more baffling than enlightening for this purpose. But dictionaries also name very different expressions using these words as components: condition, factor, framework, requirement (well, at least factor and condition/requirement are two different things from a math/logic point of view, so some look like bad machine translations).
So what is the common expression I'm looking for, used in different contexts? Or does it not exist and I have to check the context in English first and then choose the appropriate expression, according to the contexts mentioned above?
PS: I'm not looking for the common term boundary conditions in math, which translates to the German Randbedingung.
Best Answer
In common usage, infrastructure often is used unqualified to refer to good physical conditions in a community (as, for example, "Our town has the infrastructure to support your robot factory!"), although it implies little or nothing about tax, economic, and labor conditions. Of course one can also say "Their infrastructure is awful!"; that is, "good" is not an inherent quality of infrastructure.
Note, infrastructure is "The basic facilities, services and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society."
Regarding linguee.com, their "About" page clearly says, "there is no other technology anywhere else in the world that compares with Linguee", so obviously you should keep using it. :) They also assert that the translations they provide (which, if I understand correctly, are in this case English to German) are human-made (or at least human-moderated). In comparing the English and German, it seems that the connotation you suggested for the German word (i.e. "conditions necessary for a business idea to work out") do not hold up in these translations; for example, "worst imaginable conditions" going to "denkbar schlechten Rahmenbedingungen".