I know that between Chinese & Japanese, there’s vocabulary where the placement of each character differs but retains the same or related definition for the most part, like how 士兵 becomes 兵士 in Japanese, you get the drift. Technically something equivalent exists in Latin based languages such as Red Cross (EN) & Cruz Roja (ES).
| 日本語 | 中文 | ENG |
|---|---|---|
| 詐欺 | 欺詐 | Fraud |
| 苦痛 | 痛苦 | Pain |
| 脅威 | 威脅 | Threat |
| 講演 | 演講 | Lecture |
| 制限 | 限制 | Restriction |
There’s this related thing in linguistics which is quite fun, relating to the terms loanword and calque, which both mean “words originating from foreign languages”: The word calque is a loanword, and the word loanword is a calque.
A calque is a literal translation of the components of a word. One of the most commonly calqued words across all languages is skyscraper (in Chinese, it’s 摩天大楼, “sky-touching large building”). The word loanword is a calque of German Lehnwort (lehnen, to borrow + Wort, word).
A loanword is a word which is taken directly from another language and, with exceptions to fit the receiving language’s grammar and pronunciation, is not translated. An example of an English word which has been calqued into many languages is “okay”. The word calque is a loanword from French, where it means “copy”.