迁移

• Pinyin: qiān yí
• Hanzi breakdown: 迁 = 辶 + 千 (relocate/move); 移 = 禾 (grain/crop) + 多 (much) (shift/displace — originally grain shifting in wind)

Meaning

To migrate; to relocate; to transfer from one place to another. Used for the movement of people, animals, data, or concepts.

A versatile formal term used across ecology (animal migration), demographics (population movement), technology (data migration), and psychology (transfer of learning). More formal and broader in scope than 搬家. Often used in academic, scientific, and technical writing.

Examples

1. 全球气候变暖导致大批海洋生物被迫迁移至水温更低的高纬度海域，海洋生态系统面临严峻挑战。 Global warming has forced large numbers of marine organisms to migrate to higher-latitude waters with lower temperatures, putting marine ecosystems under severe strain.
2. 这家科技公司历时一年，将全部核心业务数据从本地服务器成功迁移至云端存储平台，大幅提升了运维效率。 Over the course of a year, this tech company successfully migrated all of its core business data from on-premise servers to a cloud storage platform, greatly improving operations efficiency.
3. 心理学研究表明，学习迁移现象在人类认知发展中普遍存在，良好的基础教育有助于促进知识与技能的跨领域迁移。 Psychological research shows that learning transfer is widespread in human cognitive development, and strong foundational education helps promote the transfer of knowledge and skills across different domains.

Usage Guide

Context: ecology, demographics, technology, academia

Tone: neutral

Do Say

• 随着产业结构调整，制造业产能正加速向劳动力成本更低的东南亚地区迁移，对国内就业市场产生了深远影响。(As industrial restructuring accelerates, manufacturing capacity is shifting rapidly toward Southeast Asian regions with lower labour costs, having a profound impact on the domestic employment market.)
• 数据迁移工程师需要在确保零数据损失的前提下，将旧系统中积累多年的海量历史记录完整转移至新平台。(Data migration engineers must transfer the massive volume of historical records accumulated over many years in legacy systems to the new platform intact, with zero data loss.)

Don't Say

• 我迁移了一下椅子 — 迁移 implies purposeful, systematic relocation of people, animals, data, or operations; use 移动/挪 for physical object movement

Origin & History

迁 (move/relocate) + 移 (shift/displace) — compound of two movement verbs; systematic relocation or displacement

Cultural Context

Era: Modern

Generation: All ages

Social background: Universal