International
Same behaviour, different words?
Before we travel anywhere, there is a problem closer to home. We do not completely agree on what bullying means in English. Does it have to happen more than once? Must someone intend to cause harm? Does there have to be an imbalance of power? Can exclusion be bullying? Can one extremely serious incident count? But definitions are only part of the story. A young person may feel frightened, humiliated, intimidated, isolated or unsafe whether or not what they experience fits somebody else's definition of bullying. So the international question is not simply:
What does another country call bullying?
It is broader:
How do people in different places recognise, describe and respond to behaviour that causes fear, pain, humiliation, intimidation or exclusion?
And just as importantly:
What can we learn from one another?
The purpose of looking internationally is not to decide that one country, culture or approach has found the correct answer. Different experiences and different ways of responding can make us question our own assumptions, recognise things we may have overlooked and discover possibilities we might not otherwise have considered.
Translation is not an all or nothing business
If agreeing on one definition is difficult within English, imagine the challenge when we cross languages, cultures and borders. A word translated into English as bullying may overlap with our word without describing exactly the same experience. It may place more emphasis on exclusion, humiliation, relationships, hierarchy, aggression, seniority, fear or the experience of harm. Translation can still be useful. We can understand part of what somebody means without understanding everything. We can also misunderstand one part while understanding another quite well.
Understanding and misunderstanding can exist in degrees.
That is why finding the nearest English word is only the beginning.
Language is more than vocabulary
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote:
“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
His argument was much wider than translation. He was interested in the relationship between language and ways of living. Human cultures are not incomprehensible to one another. We communicate across cultures every day. But the thought is useful. Understanding a word involves more than finding another word in a dictionary. We also need to understand something about how, where and why the word is used, what experiences it describes and what people believe should happen when those experiences occur. That matters when we talk about bullying.
Close cousins
Some words appear to sit reasonably close to the English idea of bullying. In Swedish there is mobbning. In Norwegian, mobbing. In Dutch, pesten. Cross cultural research has found these northern European terms relatively close to the English concept. But even close cousins are not identical. Norway's national pupil survey explains mobbing as repeated negative actions against someone who may have difficulty defending themselves. Sweden is different again. Although mobbning is widely used, Swedish school law works with the broader concept kränkande behandling, treatment that violates a child's or pupil's dignity. It can happen repeatedly, but it can also happen on a single occasion. The important difference is not simply linguistic. Different systems decide differently when an experience of harm requires recognition and action.
Words change and travel
Language does not stand still. Italy uses bullismo. Today it is established in Italian law, where bullying is described around repeated aggression or harassment capable of causing fear, anxiety, isolation or marginalisation. Malaysia uses buli. Malay dictionary definitions include mistreating or intimidating another person, often someone weaker, and also contain older associations with the mistreatment of newcomers. In 2026, buli also became a statutory concept under Malaysia's Anti Bully Act. Here something interesting happens. Italian law expressly describes bullying as repeated. Malaysian law allows buli to be repeated or to consist of one severe incident causing physical, psychological or social harm. The useful question is not:
Which country has got it right?
It is:
What can these different approaches help us notice?
One may direct our attention towards patterns that develop over time. Another may remind us that a single experience can sometimes cause serious harm. Looking internationally allows each perspective to challenge and enrich the others.
Sometimes the experience is organised differently
Other cultures make simple translation even more difficult.
Japan: ijime
The Japanese term いじめ, ijime is frequently translated as bullying, but it should not simply be described as “the Japanese word for bullying”. Japan's anti bullying law places considerable emphasis on the effect on the child experiencing the behaviour, including mental or physical pain. Cross cultural research has also associated ijime particularly with relationships within the peer group and serious social exclusion. That directs our attention towards something that can sometimes disappear when discussion concentrates mainly on physical aggression:
belonging and the fear of losing it.
That does not mean Japan has discovered something that nobody else understands. It means that looking at ijime may encourage the rest of us to look more closely at belonging, relationships and exclusion in our own communities.
India: ragging
India gives us a different example. Ragging can involve humiliation, intimidation, psychological harm, physical abuse and other behaviour that may overlap with bullying. But simply translating ragging as bullying loses something important. Indian regulations explicitly discuss power, authority and superiority, particularly around relationships involving new students, junior students and senior students. The experience cannot be understood fully without also considering seniority, initiation and institutional hierarchy. Again, the value is not in deciding whether ragging is better or worse than something called bullying elsewhere. It is in noticing another way in which power can operate.
South Korea: more than one category
South Korea demonstrates why we should sometimes stop looking for one equivalent word altogether. Its law uses the broad concept:
학교폭력, school violence
This covers a range of physical, psychological, sexual, social and online harms. Within that broader category is:
따돌림, ttadolim
which describes persistent or repeated attacks that cause another pupil suffering. There is also the widely used term 왕따, wang ta, associated particularly with being singled out or socially excluded. So perhaps we should not ask only:
What is the Korean word for bullying?
Perhaps we should ask:
Which experiences are being recognised, and how are they being grouped together?
That question can then turn back towards our own language and assumptions.
Ask young people
Researchers have faced exactly this problem. In an international study published in 2002, Peter K. Smith and colleagues created 25 simple stick figure cartoons showing different situations between young people. They showed them to 1,245 pupils aged 8 and 14 in 14 countries and asked whether different words in their own languages applied to what they saw. The answers did not produce one neat international category called bullying. Some words covered a broad range of harmful situations. Others were weighted more towards physical aggression, verbal behaviour or social exclusion. Age mattered too. Younger children mainly distinguished aggressive situations from non aggressive ones. Older pupils made clearer distinctions between fighting, physical bullying, verbal bullying and social exclusion. That raises an important question.
Do adults and young people always recognise the same experiences in the same way?
Perhaps we should not only ask experts what words mean. Perhaps we should also ask people what they recognise, what concerns them and what they believe matters.
What would you call it?
We are beginning our own ongoing anonymous visitor study. Visitors will be shown the same imaginary situations and asked what they think is happening. We are interested not only in whether somebody calls an experience bullying, but what they notice about it.
Fear. Pain. Humiliation. Intimidation. Power. Exclusion. Repetition. Intent. Belonging.
We will not ask for names, email addresses, schools, exact locations or personal experiences of bullying. The study will not tell us how common bullying is. It will explore something different:
When people see the same situation, what do they recognise, what do they call it and what do they think matters?
Take part in our anonymous visitor study
As more people participate, we will share the combined results and explain clearly how they were collected and what they can, and cannot, tell us.
Words matter, but experiences matter too
Definitions matter because they influence what gets counted, researched, reported and acted upon. But people do not experience definitions. They experience fear, humiliation, intimidation, isolation, pain, uncertainty, loss of belonging and sometimes physical harm. Different languages and cultures may draw boundaries in different places. That should make us curious, not dismissive. The absence of an exact word for bullying does not mean the absence of harmful behaviour. Calling an experience by a different name does not make it less real. And discovering that another country approaches something differently does not automatically make their approach better or worse than ours. International learning works in more than one direction. We can ask:
What can their experience teach us?
And equally:
What might our experience contribute to theirs?
Perhaps the most useful international question is therefore not:
Does your definition match ours?
It is:
What is happening to this person, how are they experiencing it, what can we learn from one another, and when is action needed?
Explore further
Explore the Definition Wheel Compare different definitions and the ideas they contain.
Explore the International Globe Explore languages, cultures, laws, research, projects and connections around the world.
Next: Who decides when action is needed?
Explore how young people, schools, communities, governments and legal systems decide when harmful behaviour requires a response.