The term for “bullying”

A while ago I ran into the word “bullying” in a project. The original translator translated it “霸凌”. I hated it, but after some research I found out the translation was actually not wrong.

Less than half an hour ago I suddenly realized the rendering 霸凌 ‘bullying’ is actually in the very fine tradition (which I thought was long lost) that produced terms like 世紀siècle’, 系列série’ and 系統 ‘system’/‘système a transliteration that actually means what the Chinese characters suggest it means.

That said, the ingenuity of the term would have been more easily seen if “bullying” were actually pronounced /'bʌliʔɪŋ/; unfortunately that’s not how the word is pronounced.

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