i was joking with my dad about this, which must be some time in late 80's.

he's an engineering scholar, i read this chinese word 鲁棒性 in his writing and was somehow surprised such a seemingly "vulgar" word would be used in serious paper.

only later did i find out its english counterpart is robustness. so i guess is that when chinese scholars encountered this english word at 1st (which msut be quite soem time ago) thye had no idea how to properly translate it, so there came the easy choice: transaltion based on its sound