As an important term used in population genetics and evolutionary biology, gene flow often appears in literature and documents. This term was originally translated as "Jiyinliu" in Chinese for that purpose. The extensive cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) crops in the world has largely promoted the use of this term because of the worldwide concerns over the potential ecological impacts caused by transgene escape via gene flow. Consequently, a dozen of Chinese versions of the same English term have been translated and used by scientists from different disciplines. These Chinese terms include "Jiyinpiaoyi", "Jiyinliudong", "Jiyinpiaoliu", "Jiyinpiaoshi", "Jiyinpiaobian", and "Jiyinkuosan" that represent slightly different forms and meanings in Chinese. These terms are frequently used in different scientific or policy documents relating to environmental biosafety of GE crops, which has caused considerable confusion to understand the environmental biosafety issues caused by gene flow, both among scientists and the public. In this paper, we review the concept of the term gene flow in the sense of population genetics and evolutionary biology, and track the interpretation of this term both in old English and Chinese literatures. We particularly traced the changes of different Chinese translation of gene flow in published literatures for the last half century when the term was first introduced to China. Based on our historian′s work and the original definition of the term, we suggest retaining the original translation of gene flow as "Jiyinliu" that reflects the closest meaning of the English term both for biosafety issues and population/evolutionary biology. We also discussed the concept of gene flow in terms of environmental biosafety assessment and population/evolutionary studies.