Context:

The term sustainable development has remained in the interest of experts, governments and government institutions, but a discussion of its translations into Spanish is presented. The objective of this work was to clarify the debate on the term sustainable development in Spanish by analysing its use over time, geographically and by discipline.

Method:

Through the non-participatory methods of secondary data, databases and computer tools were analysed articles from scientific journals, specialized books and databases were reviewed such as Web of Science, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, Scielo, Redalyc, among others. Computer tools such as Google Trends and Google Ngram Viewer were used to analyse the variation of indicators of evolution of search interest and scientific production.

Results:

Through the combination of non-participatory methods, indicators of general interest and scientific production were determined.

Conclusions:

The results revealed that both terms are used indistinctly, preference is observed in the use of the term term desarrollo sostenido over the term desarrollo sustentable, both over time and in the economic and environmental disciplines.