As I understand it, the word 学際 is usually used to mean "interdisciplinary"
when referring to college courses. However, I recently came across the word
"超域文化科学" while browsing college websites. In this context, 超域 seems to mean
"interdisciplinary" too, but I'm not 100% sure.

What exactly is 超域, how is it different from 学際 and how is it pronounced?
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2014-12-09T09:12:58.657
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word-choice words pronunciation
How are 超域 and 学際 different?
Both exactly means "interdiscipline(-ary)" here.

Japanese vocabulary doesn't have a word that can translate "discipline", you
can only refer to it by saying "academic field" 学問分野 or "specialized field"
専門分野 etc. Thus if you want to make a two-part compound like "inter" +
"discipline", you have to think of a workaround.

**学際{がくさい}** is a solution based on the fact most disciplines are named after
～学 "-logy", and putting it in front of 際 "border, inter-, trans-". So
literally it means "inter-learning".

**超域{ちょういき}** is, on the other hand, composed of 超 "beyond, super-" and 域
"domain, region", which also associable with 領域 "field, area". It literally
means "cross-domain".
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I think 学際 is the only standard translation of _interdisciplinary_ (at least
according to the dictionary).

Although it is easy to imagine what 超域 means, this word is unfamiliar to me at
least as a name of an academic field. And apparently there are very few
Japanese university departments with 超域 in their names.

I feel there is no meaningful difference between 学際 and 超域 here. But "超域"
sounds somewhat unique and attractive, and that may be the only reason why
they used 超域.

And it's a shame that Japanese universities are [full of such unusual faculty
names](http://blogos.com/article/51932/).
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answer