A Comparative Study of Chinese Translation of Resilience Terminology in Socio-Ecological System and Its Related Research Fields

Abstract

The accurate translation of foreign terminology plays an important role in the research and practice of various fields, so the accurate translation of “resilience” is of great significance to promote the research and practice of resilient urban and rural living environment based on ecological wisdom. The city is the most complex socio-ecological system, so it is necessary to put the “resilience” in the social-ecological system context when it is accurate to study the “resilience” of ecological practice of urban and rural living environment. As part of the worldwide burgeoning development of “resilience” research in socio-ecological systems, the past several years saw a rise in “resilience” research and practice in China, but Chinese academic circles had not arrived at the consensus of opinion about the translation of “resilience” terminology, and many kinds of translation vocabularies would result in the confusing understanding that was not conducive to the development of “resilience” theory and practice in China. In order to find the most suitable translation vocabulary for unification, we compare the definition of “resilience” in English dictionary with the three mainstream definitions in Chinese dictionary. After that we review the connotation of academic concept of “resilience” through international literature and do a statistic analysis and reason analysis of the translation of “resilience” through Chinese literatures in socio-ecological system and its related fields. The results show that the translation vocabulary of “韧性”is the closest to the connotation of the academic concept of “resilience”. In our view, implies a rejection of the opinion that the system would be restored to equilibrium after disturbance, and it matched with the idea that our world, as a socio-ecological system, should be stronger, more prosperous and more vitality rather than come back to the origin situation after a disaster. 【摘要翻译】外来术语的准确翻译在各个领域的研究和实践中发挥着重要作用，因此准确翻译“弹性”对促进基于生态智慧的弹性城乡生活环境的研究和实践具有重要意义。城市是最复杂的社会生态系统，因此在准确研究城乡人居环境生态实践的弹性时，有必要将弹性置于社会生态系统语境中。作为社会生态系统“弹性”研究在世界范围内蓬勃发展的一部分，过去几年，“弹性”研究和实践在中国兴起，但中国学术界尚未就“弹性”术语的翻译达成一致意见，翻译词汇种类繁多，造成理解混乱，不利于顺应理论在中国的发展和实践。为了找到最适合统一的翻译词汇，我们将《英语词典》中的“弹性”定义与《汉语词典》中的三个主流定义进行了比较。然后，我们通过国际文献回顾了“弹性”这一学术概念的内涵，并通过社会生态系统及其相关领域的中文文献对“弹性”的翻译进行了统计分析和原因分析。结果表明，翻译词汇中的“韧性”最接近“弹性”这一学术概念的内涵。在我们看来，这意味着拒绝了系统在受到干扰后将恢复平衡的观点，这与我们的世界作为一个社会生态系统应该更强大、更繁荣和更有活力，而不是在灾难后回到原始状态的想法相吻合。