京津冀 in English

[roddy]

京津冀 refers to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei - ie, Beijing and its immediate neighbours. Does anyone have a decent way of referring to this in English, without typing the whole thing out? The best I can come up with is BTH, but perhaps we can do better. Had a quick look online, but no joy.

[Shelley]

Is this a common grouping? What I mean is would English speakers know what was meant by any abbreviation of the 3 cities.

 

Except for people in or who have been to china, is this something easily recognized.

 

I have not got the qualifications to say either way having never heard of this grouping but also never being to china or having any connections with people who may say this sort of thing.

 

For English people would you have to explain or would they know? if so is there any point in an abbreviation. Just saying, no criticism intended.

 

But as I say I would have had no idea what you were talking about it if you hadn't explained it.

 

Having said all that if it is common and would be understood maybe the Beijing triangle or the northern 3 or BeiTianHe

 

But it might be all rubbish, but it was fun trying to think of some.

[陳德聰]

JJJ.

[lingo-ling]

It really depends on the context you're working in. Is this grouping frequently repeated in the original text? Is it a short blurb like a headline or ad, or is it a long text? Is it something that's common local knowledge, like in parts of the US where people might say "the tri-state area" and everyone living in the area automatically knows what is meant? There are a lot of things to consider.

 

If it's a long text in which the grouping is frequent, the first time you mention it, you could say something along the lines of "Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, which we will call BTH for short", and just use BTH after that.

[skylee]

Some reference - http://www.dictall.com/dictall/result_sentence.jsp?cd=UTF-8&keyword=%E4%BA%AC%E6%B4%A5%E5%86%80

 

These are used - 1) Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei (Region) 2) Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Region) 3) Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolis/Metropolitan Circle/Region 4) the JingJinJi Region 5) Jing-Jin-Ji Region

 

It looks like that some also call the area 大北京地区 (the Greater Beijing area).

[roddy]

Argh, accidentally lost a post. 

 

Assume I can give it in full once. But even then using BTH doesn't seem satisfactory. What similar geographical groupings are there where we use an unpronounceable acronym? The nearest I can think of is, eg, the BRIC nations, which is economic, and comes off the tongue a lot easier. We have the south-west, the central belt, the mid-west, the eastern seaboard, the home counties.

 

It's a shame a decent river doesn't run through it, or we could have a delta, like the Yangtze and Pearl (Pearl River Delta, PRD, that's a fairly common usage).

 

I'm not keen on Greater as it still sounds to me like that should be within Beijing's boundaries - ie, including its rural counties, not just the city proper. Compare Greater London. 

[skylee]

No river. But it is part of the 环渤海经济圈/地区 Bohai Economic Rim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohai_Economic_Rim

[roddy]

BE-ijing-T-Ianjing-H-ebei - BeTH. Howzat?

[Jeremy Andrews]

The first thing that comes to mind is "Beijing Metropolitan Area," or "Beijing Metroplex." Around here, we have the Dallas Metropolitan Area, which includes Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington. But we usually shorten that to "Metroplex," "Dallas Metroplex," or "Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex," depending on how lazy the person saying it wants to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroplex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_of_the_United_States

So, I think Metroplex or metropolitan area would be the most analogous concepts to what you're describing.

[roddy]

"A metroplex is a contiguous metropolitan area that has more than one principal anchor city of near equal importance."

The cities covered aren't contiguous - Hebei is largely rural, and you don't need to get far out of Beijing before the capital is a distant memory. It might work if you ditched Hebei. But Beijing and Tianjin being of near equal importance? No chance. 

 

Would 都市群 work as a translation for metroplex?

[Jeremy Andrews]

While I was looking at the Wikipedia page, I did see Beijing-Tianjin listed as an example of a Metroplex.

I'm not sure how strictly that definition is applied in common practice, honestly. I saw another definition that just said "a vast metropolitan area that encompasses several cities and their suburbs."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Metroplex

But I did enter that Chinese term into Google Translate, and got "Megalopolis." However, the definition of Megalopolis seems to include the entire Bohai Economic Rim in this case. So, that grouping of three cities seems to be somewhere between a Metroplex and a Megalopolis. The Chinese characters seem to break down to something like "All City Group," though... which sounds like it could be either:

Metropolitan Area

Megalopolis

Metroplex

Depending on a number of factors. But the point is, the Chinese term seems like it could be translated into English differently depending on context, because all it really implies is a grouping of cities. English terms with similar implications tend to be more technical, and are most often used among urban planners, or for statistical purposes.

I can tell you the etymology of the terms, however. Megalo- is "abnormally large," and -polis is "city." So the implication is of an abnormally large city, or several cities and their adjoining suburbs. I suspect this term could work, but it may or may not be too vague.

Metro- is actually a shortened form of "Metropolis," which just means a big city. -plex actually implies something made up of units or parts (like a duplex). So, the implication here is a unit comprised of large cities. This would probably encompass Beijing and Tianjin, but may not be broad enough to include Hebai.

I think you could use either one, it just depends on whether you want to fudge on the side of being too specific/exclusive or too vague/inclusive. But I think people would be able to figure out what you meant without much trouble. If you define the three cities up front, the meaning would be perfectly clear and acceptable.

[Demonic_Duck]

I'd go with: "Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, known in Chinese as 'Jing-Jin-Ji'" (and henceforth simply "Jing-Jin-Ji").

[Guest realmayo]

Hebei province and the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities (hereafter the Hebei-muni region). Nah.

Then there's the Capital Economic Circle: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20130825000057&cid=1102