How do you say entrepreneur in Chinese?

[Dawei3]

For entrepreneur, Pimsleur 5 teaches qiyejia 企业家。(Google also gives this as the most often used term)

 

Pleco gives: 

Qiyejia 企业家  

Shiyejia 实业家

Chuangyezhe 创业者

 

From talking with friends, none of the terms seem to directly correlate with the full meaning entrepreneur.  The Chinese words relate to simply starting up a business, almost any business, and don’t connote creativity.  In contrast, in the US & Europe, an entrepreneur is “a person with great, innovating ideas that identifies the need for the creation of a business to feel a void. Their characteristics are creativity, imagination and a thirst for work.” (source:  EU Institute for Entrepreneurship Development)   That is, someone who starts a McDonald's Restaurant maybe a successful business man/woman, but not an entrepreneur.  

 

Several friends noted: 

企业家 is very formal.  It can be used for the boss of a company who has worked in the area for many years didn’t actually fund the start up of the company (e.g., the son of the founder)

实业家 is almost never used.

创业者 commonly used, particularly in relation to successful start-ups. 

 

Any thoughts on the above?  If a person starts their own company is 创业者 appropriate?  One friend mentioned something about how these terms connote success in business, but I forget what she said.   

 

(As a somewhat humorous add-on, Pleco also gives 土鳖 (ground beetle) 哈哈 which in contrast to a 海归 (haigui), is a professional or entrepreneur that hasn't been overseas).  

[Michaelyus]

To 创业 is the only thing I hear regularly - its use as a verb is a lot more common in colloquial speech.

 

企业家 I come across sporadically for "entrepreneurs" as a class of people, or the formal names of associations e.g. 中澳企业家联合会.

[Tomsima]

same as Michaelyus, although just wanted to add that 創業 sounds pretty formal to me, hear it in government statistics speeches all the time

[Moki]

I've heard both 企业家 and 创业者 used regularly and both seem normal. I feel like the level of formality of the word in English is fairly high anyway. I didn't know what it meant when I was a kid. 

[Dawei3]

Thanks for the replies.  That creativity is a key part of the word's meaning was emphasized by an article I just read in the Wall St. J.  In noted that a woman within a large corporation was an "entrepreneur" because she had figured out inventive new markets for the company's products.

 

14 hours ago, Moki said:

like the level of formality of the word in English is fairly high

One thing that I find interesting is that in English when a word feels formal or high level, it's usually a word of French origin, whereas the everyday word equivalent is usually of Germanic origin.  Entrepreneur is of Fr. origin (and it has a very nice "ring" to it).   (albeit, I can't think of another word of Germanic origin that is equivalent to entrepreneur). 

 

To dine (of Fr origin) is formal, to eat (Ger) is casual.  Women "perspire" (Fr), not sweat (Ger).  Saying a women is "small" (Ger) sounds bad, whereas "petite" sounds nice.  We don't eat "pigs" (Ger), we eat pork (Fr), we don't eat cows (Ger), we eat beef (Fr).  etc....  

Edited June 21, 2019 at 06:16 PM by Dawei3
Wrote Ger, not Fr

[Lu]

12 minutes ago, Dawei3 said:

(albeit, I can't think of another word of Germanic origin that is equivalent to entrepreneur).

My synonym dictionary suggests 'enterpriser', but perhaps that is French in origin as well.

 

(In Dutch the normal word is 'ondernemer', which is a person who undertakes an undertaking. But you can't translate it as 'undertaker'.)

[Publius]

44 minutes ago, Lu said:

In Dutch the normal word is 'ondernemer'

From that I try to deduce the German spelling and there it is in dictionary 'Unternehmer'.

[Dawei3]

6 hours ago, Lu said:

In Dutch the normal word is 'ondernemer', which is a person who undertakes an undertaking. B

This is similar to the word of French origin.  i.e., According to the Amer Heritage Dictionary, entrepreneur comes from Fr > O Fr. entreprendre - which means to undertake.  (And this links to Latin:  entre - between, prendre - to take)

 

And in English, in simple terms an entrepreneur is someone who undertakes creating a business, but now it has taken on a meaning with much more flavor.  The same dictionary also links this word to enterprise.  (which makes sense when you see them side-by-side - but I never thought of the relationship until I saw it in the dictionary)  

 

I liked hearing the Dutch input.  Word origins are fascinating.  I'm in the midst of reading Guy Deutscher's "The unfolding of language," a book on how languages evolve.  It's likely best book I've read in ~5 years (maybe 10?).  He's currently at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands  

 

Lu - With your knowledge of English, Dutch, Chinese + other languages(?), you might find Deutscher's book particularly interesting.  

Edited June 21, 2019 at 07:39 PM by Dawei3

[Lu]

4 hours ago, Publius said:

From that I try to deduce the German spelling

Well, everyone knows German is basically a Dutch dialect ?