Resilience vs. Resistance

[Glen]

I'm not finding a difference in Spanish between resilience and resistance (as applied to persons) when they both come up translated as resistencia. In English of course, resilience, the ability to recover from a setback one has suffered, is not the same as resistance, which means either outright opposition to something or an impenetrable barrier against something. For example, to describe "the resilience of the resistance movement" there ought to be a way to avoid using the same Spanish noun. Is there? Thanks for any suggestions.

[aleCcowaN]

Spanish resistencia and resiliencia are completely different terms both in Physics and Psychology. People tend to misunderstand both, mainly in Physics.

[Don José]

It seems that "resiliencia" was took after the English resilience.
page 7 in:
http://books.google.com/books?id=aeH...page&q&f=false

According to the reverso dictionary, "tolerancia" and "elasticidad" could be used in different contexts.
http://dictionary.reverso.net/englis...ish/resilience

I worked some time in Ecology, and the term resilience was familiar to me. I don't remember if it was translated always in the same way, but I'd say that "capacidad de recuperación" was often used (may be to avoid the neologism). You can see this and other examples here:
http://www.linguee.es/ingles-espanol...ence+unit.html
I doubt wheter "resistencia" could work some times.

Although being in the RAE, I don't think "resiliencia" is a word as commonly used in the standard conversation as "resistencia".

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Don José

I worked some time in Ecology, and the term resilience was familiar to me. I don't remember if it was translated always in the same way, but I'd say that "capacidad de recuperación" was often used (may be to avoid the neologism).

The term résilience was coined in Physics about 1900 and it's been used in Spanish during the last century [many instances in RAE's corpus; listed in all my dictionaries; I've studied it decades ago]. The use of it by analogy, outside Physics, is a bit more modern and there are some variations, but basically resiliencia/resiliency is to misfortune sort as homoeostasis is to daily life. Particularly in Psychology, it's the ability to overcome stress without becoming traumatized or being left with any moral scar.

Comparing resiliency with resistance, endurance or tenacity (both in English and Spanish) is losing the essential attribute of no-change-left-after that the term is pointing to.

[Glen]

Very helpful. Thanks to all of you!