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FEATURES Since the term Seele ('soul/mind') does not appear on its own in the German source text (ST), I used the compound Seelenleben ('soul-life') for the purposes of comparison. Das Unbewusste (formerly spelt Unbewußte), with the German neuter definite article das, is a nominalisation of the adjective unbewusst ('unconscious') and is therefore translated as 'the unconscious' in English, the Chinese RT of which is also varied. Noticeably, the Chinese translation 精神 ('spirit') corresponds to 'mental' as well as 'psycho-'. More importantly, it consists of two characters for 'essence' and 'energy' and, hence, evokes liveliness, as does the German word Seele. Therefore, it is not affected by Bettelheim's (1983/1989) criticism of the scientific coldness that emanates from the term 'mind'. Furthermore, 精神分析 ('spirit analysis') was coined for Freud's 'psychoanalysis' to differentiate from two established translations: 心理分析 ('heart-logic analysis') for Pierre Janet's 'psychological analysis'5 and 心之分析 ('analysis of the heart') for Bertrand Russell's The Analysis of Mind.6 MEETING OF MINDS Sigmund Freud in 1920 (left); and his statue in Hampstead, London (below) This indicates strong ties between heart, mind and psyche in the Chinese conception. As the essential term in Freudian theory of psychoanalysis, the rendition of 'the unconscious' is not uncontroversial. It is translated as 无意识 ('no consciousness'), with the character 无 corresponding to the prefix 'un-' in the pivot translation (PT), which is a rather literal translation in comparison to alternatives such as 潜意识 ('latent consciousness') and 隐意识 ('hidden consciousness'). The diversity in rendering 'the unconscious' can be traced back to the different uses of this term by Freud, as his definition of the unconscious evolved from being 'temporarily latent' to 'the repressed'.7 These two senses of 'the unconscious' find their expression in different Chinese translations: in the notion of latency, the potential for activation is conveyed by 潜意识 ('latent consciousness'), whereas 隐意识 ('hidden consciousness') communicates something deeper inside, unwilling to emerge, like the repressed after its retreat from the consciousness. The variation in rendering 'the unconscious' and 'id', and the coinage of 精神分析 ('spirit analysis') for 'psychoanalysis' (which looks almost identical to the German Psychoanalyse) provide examples as to how the complexity of Freud's obscure concepts becomes explicit in the discussion of the Chinese RT. What is more, it seems possible to convey the original meaning in the Chinese RT even when a mistake occurs in the English translation. A mistake in the English Freud describes the id as ein unbewußt seelisches Wesen. Most German adjectives can be used as adverbs without changing their form and, according to this morphological rule, unbewußt (older spelling) is used here as an adverb that modifies the adjective seelisch ('mental'). Instead of rendering the phrase as 'an unconsciously mental entity', which suggests an entity that is unaware of its nature, the English translation uses the adjective 'unconscious', giving the impression that the mental entity referred to as 'id' is unconscious. This apparent mistake in the English raises the question: how is the Chinese translation affected? Vol/52 No/5 2013 On the word level, the impact on the Chinese translation is immediate because both Chinese translations render 'unconscious' as 无意识 ('no consciousness') plus the suffix 的, which is the particle to form adjectives. However, their rendition of entity is 存在 ('existing'), which is more commonly used as a verb (ie, 'to exist'). According to The New Oxford EnglishChinese Dictionary, 'entity' can refer to 'a thing with distinct and independent existence' or 'existence'. While the first sense is activated to translate the meaning of Wesen ('being') in this context in English, the second one seems to have been adopted by the Chinese translator. Moreover, the indefinite article 'an' becomes 一种 ('a kind of') and is omitted in another published Chinese RT. The entire phrase is translated as 一种无意识的精神存在 ('a kind of unconscious spiritual existing'). Thus, despite the mistake in the English PT, the Chinese renditions approximate to the German text in the sense that the existence of id in the mind is unconscious. This shows that a mistake in the PT does not necessarily result in a distortion in the RT, and that text comprehension goes far beyond word level. In conclusion, I would note that relay translation is worthy of further study because its approach to conveying the meaning of the original is different from that of the pivot translation, and this difference may illuminate problems in translation that call for closer examination. Notes 1 1927-1931, The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-analysis, London 2 1930, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna 3 Strachey, J (trans) in the SE, vol. 21, 64-145 4 Fu, Y and He, D (trans), 1987, Anhui Literature & Art Publishing House; Yan, Z and Zhang, M (trans), 1987, Shijiangzhuang, Hebei Education Press 5 Janet, P, 1923, La médecine psychologique 6 Russel, B, 1921, The Analysis of Mind, George Allen & Unwin, London 7 See, eg, the abstract of Freud's paper Etwas vom Unbewußten ('Some Remarks on the Unconscious') OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 23