When Freud Headed For The East - Aspects of A Chinese Translation of His Works

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis
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When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a

Chinese translation of his works
Tomas Plaenkers
To cite this article: Tomas Plaenkers (2013) When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a
Chinese translation of his works, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 94:5, 993-1017,
DOI: 10.1111/1745-8315.12058
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The International Journal of
Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94:993–1017 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12058
When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a

Chinese translation of his works
Tomas Plaenkers1
Liebigstr. 29, 60323 Frankfurt a. M., Germany
– plaenkers@sigmund-freud-institut.de
(Accepted for publication 9 October 2012)
Working on the basis of a resum! e of the Chinese translations to date of

individual works by Sigmund Freud and critiques of these as secondary trans-
lations from the English, the particular difficulties of translating into a
non-Indo-European language with an isolating and analytical writing system
are presented. By way of introduction, reference is made to English and
French-language contributions to the issues of translation.
Keywords: Freud, translation, China, German-Chinese, language
Introduction
If terms are not correctly defined, words will not harmonize with things, if words
do not harmonize with things, public business will remain undone; if public business
remains undone, order and harmony will not flourish; if order and harmony do not
flourish, law and justice will not attain their ends; if law and justice do not attain
their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot. The wise man, therefore,
frames his definitions to regulate his speech, and his speech to regulate his actions.
He is never reckless in his choice of words. Upon this, all things depend.
Confucius (551–479 BC, p. 204)
The Chinese language is full of instances of indefiniteness which might fill us with
alarm.
Sigmund Freud (1916, p. 230)
The coherency of Freud’s oeuvre is that of the German language.

Arthur Goldschmidt (1988, p. 141)
Having now been in progress for 90 years, the attempt to translate and
transmit the writings and hence the thoughts of Sigmund Freud to China
and hence into the Chinese language is entrenched in an increasingly accel-
erating process of globalization, which has also captured the international
psychoanalytical community with its polyglot history. A translation into
Chinese should serve to disseminate psychoanalysis in China, of course, but
by contrast with the UK and the USA of 100 years ago (cf. Steiner, 1987,
1988) the translation of Freud’s works is only a building block here – albeit
1
Expanded and amended version of the Italian publication in Rivista di Psicoanalisi 1, 2012, whose pub-
lisher, Dr Luchetti, I thank for permission to publish in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the Institute of Psychoanalysis
994 T. Plaenkers
a very important one – for constructing the psychoanalytical house in

China. Thus translations of psychoanalytical works in China have existed
ever since 1912, and as early as 1929 the (to my knowledge) first translation
of Freud appeared with his work Psycho-Analysis by Gao Juefu (cf. Blow-
ers, 1995). In 1930 Gao then translated Joan Riviere’s English translation
of Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Since the 1980s courses
in analytical psychotherapy conducted by Norwegian and German col-
leagues (Varvin and Gerlach, 2013) have been spreading the ideas of Freud
and his successors from the various schools of psychoanalytical thought
and, under the supervision of the China Committee (P. Loewenberg), the
IPA has set about training the first Chinese psychoanalysts in Beijing and
Shanghai. Thus translation of the core corpus of psychoanalysis can be only
a building block in a West–East dialogue that aims to bridge an expanse of
the great unfamiliarity between the Chinese understanding of the person
and that of the European Enlightenment. This is considered impossible by
not a few people in the Western world – psychoanalysis in China?2 In an
Asiatic culture? Freud did not seem to share this view. More than 80 years
ago, on 27 May 1929, he wrote a letter to Zhang Shizhao (1882–1973), a
former Chinese Minister of Education, in reply to the latter’s letter (no
longer available to us)3:
Highly esteemed Professor,

I am extremely delighted by your intention, in whatever manner you wish to exe-
cute it, whether you are paving the way for knowledge of psychoanalysis in your
home country of China or whether you are giving us contributions for our journal
Imago, in which you measure our presumptions about archaic forms of expression
against the material provided by your language. What I quoted from Chinese in
the lectures was taken from an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.).
Most sincerely,
Your Freud
Zhang Shizhao became one of the first translators of Freud in China,

translating Freud’s Selbstdarstellung [An Autobiographical Study] from Ger-
man into Chinese in 1930.4 As early as 1912 an initial article5 had appeared
in China, citing Freud’s name. It was followed by numerous works on psy-
choanalysis, partly including translations of individual Freudian works in
the wake of the 4 May Movement,6 documenting an ongoing interest in
psychoanalysis among Chinese intellectuals. However, this underwent radi-
cal interruption during the so-called Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976.
2
Cf. on this question Gerlach, 2006; Karkar, 1985, 2002; Ng, 1985.
3
The letter (Freud, 1929) is still preserved as a reprint only (see the end of this paper) in Sigmund
Freud’s Selbstdarstellung, translated into Chinese by Zhang Shizhao (Zhang Shizhao, 1930; cf. also
Zhang Dongshu, 1994, p. 27).
4
Cf. detailed critique of Zhang Shizhao’s translation in Zhang Jingyuan (1989, pp. 46–52).
5
Qian Zhixiu (1912).
6
In China the 4 May 1919 Movement, originally a protest against the Treaties of Versailles at the end of
World War I, evolved into an initiative, among intellectuals in particular, to renew Chinese culture
through the assimilation of Western influences. It rapidly turned into a mass movement which aimed to
modernize China after the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.
Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

Translating Freud into Chinese 995
Translate–transmit
Before I get into aspects of a Chinese Freud translation, I should like to
take up the discussion of the problems of translation within the Western
world. This discussion began with Freud himself who knew all about the
problems of translating from first-hand experience, although he had himself
translated a series of English and French works, including several by J. M.
Charcot and H. Bernheim, into German (including Freud, 1880a, 1886e,
1886f, 1888–89a, 1889d, 1892a). In the process Freud did not prescribe any
terms; rather, he pointed the reader in the direction of the word’s semantic
content, not the word per se. Instead of being terminologically fixated, he
translated with the sense in mind (cf. Pollak-Cornillot, 1986, 1990).
His works are penned in a linguistically unique form of scientific prose,
portraying the technically often difficult facts of psychoanalysis in a univer-
sally intelligible way (cf. Bettelheim, 1984; Muschg, 1930; Sch€ onau, 1968;
Mahony, 1982). In Germany this provided grounds for founding a Sigmund
Freud Prize which has been awarded by the German Academy for Lan-
guage and Literature since 1964.
It is awarded to promote a genre (scholarly prose) which the Academy feels is not
duly appreciated in comparison with other European literatures, by creators and
recipients alike, and is thus also insufficiently developed. In keeping with this inten-
tion, the prize bears the name of Sigmund Freud.7
Freud lavished great attention on the publication and translation of his

works (cf. Grubrich-Simitis, 1993; Steiner, 1987). A graphic example of this
is provided by the handwritten chronology of his publications, which
records his works, print runs and translations (Grubrich-Simitis, 1993,
pp. 32 ff.). Even during his lifetime any number of his works appeared in
translation, especially into English. Freud attached importance to “the per-
son of the translator offering certain guarantees. He must not only be inti-
mately familiar with both languages, but also with the subject of
psychoanalysis. He must himself be an analyst, otherwise the translation
could do great harm” (Freud, 1919, quoted in ibid., p. 34). And Freud calls
for differentiated translating, as he formulated it in the context of the
dream translations: “After all, a translation normally endeavours to pre-
serve the distinction made in the text and particularly to keep things that
are similar separate” (Freud, 1916, p. 172). Here Freud formulates require-
ments for the ideal translator of his works, requirements that are not that
easy to satisfy in practice. Nor was this the case with the English translation
of the Standard Edition either. Ernest Jones’s knowledge of German was
inadequate as he himself admitted in an unpublished letter of 10 December
1908 to Freud (Steiner, 1987, p. 58), and Steiner also doubts the existence
of an intimate familiarity with the German language on the part of James
Strachey (Steiner, 1987, p. 89; 1991, p. 387).
The “beloved mother tongue” (Freud, 1915, p. 278), which Freud compared
with his “own skin” (1968a, quoted in Grubrich-Simitis, 1993, p. 61), gave his
7
www.deutscheakademie.de/preise_freud.html; accessed on 15 Jan 2011.
Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

996 T. Plaenkers
scientific prose the character that was so peculiar to it, allowing each transla-
tion to become a scientific and literary venture. Thereby the manifold rela-
tionships which their creator maintained with vehicles of European and
antique cultures (cf. Anzieu, 1985, Ticho, 1985, Grubrich-Simitis, 1985;
Steiner, 1987 among others) play a significant part. It was this very inter
textuality that made Freud’s writings a first-rate European cultural product.
Without its references to Greek mythology, for example, the central complex
of psychoanalysis – Freud’s theory of the oedipal conflict – cannot be under-
stood. But Freud makes multiple borrowings within the German-speaking
cultural area too. Anzieu (1985, p. 26) alludes, for instance, to the wealth of
literary references to be found in The Interpretation of Dreams, half of which
are intended for “German-language authors from Germany, Austria and
Switzerland”. Anzieu’s assessment of the index of the Standard Edition alone
yielded “four hundred references from works to literature and art” referencing
German-language authors (ibid., p. 32).
With regard to translating Freud, however, one should not cherish the
illusion of being able to transpose Freud’s literary creative constructs, which
make such skilful use of those of the German language, into another
language. Rather, one of the translator’s tasks here is also to fashion a
target-language prose while remaining faithful to the sense of the original,
of course. This was also an aim, for example, when translating Freud into
English:
In considering a revised translation of Freud, the primary aim was bound to be the
rendering of his meaning with the greatest possible accuracy. But another, and
perhaps more difficult, problem could not be evaded: the problems of style. The lit-
erary merits of Freud’s writing cannot possibly be dismissed. Thomas Mann, for
instance, spoke of the ‘purely artistic’ qualities of Totem and Taboo – “in its struc-
ture and literary form a master-piece related and allied to all the great examples of
German essay-writing”.8 These merits could scarcely be expected to survive transla-
tion, but some effort had to be made in that direction.
(Strachey, 1966, p. xviii)
It is the modified containment of another language that can add changes of

meaning to the not merely intellectual sense in the process of translation
(Rosen, 1969). Goldschmidt (2012, p. 6) hits the nail on the head when he
asks: “… why should one not try to retell or adapt Freud – as they call it
in the theatre – since he is a great stylist in German too, after all.” Translat-
ing in the sense of an interpretation thus means attempting to convey the
sense in another notional context – here, that of a different linguistic and
cultural tradition. This process takes on particular meaning in the case of a
text like Freud’s, in which the interpretation is for ever at the centre sub-
stance-wise.
Translations into another language duplicate a problem that is also
basic to the German Freud texts: their concepts and tenets are representa-
tions which refer to an Assumed (Goldschmidt, 1988, p. 46). Laplanche
(1991) reminds us that, fundamentally, we can understand psychoanalysis
8
Thomas Mann (1929, p. 3).

as translation, as translation from the un- and the pre-conscious to the

conscious. In its clinical practice, psychoanalysis still deals constantly with
the relationship of language and consciousness. In this famous letter to
Wilhelm Fliess of 6 December 1896 Freud develops the idea of a “psychi-
cal mechanism” which “has come into being by a process of stratifica-
tion”, which he imagined as “retranscriptions” of the recollective material.
In this context he called repression a “failure of translation” (Freud, 1896,
pp. 217 ff.).
Freud (1916) impressively demonstrates this by means of slips and parap-
raxes. Translation creates consciousness in this sense. The linguistically rep-
resented external world is dynamically interrelated with the internal object
and/or semantic world, not only in the analytical setting but also in our
relationship with written texts. Tendentially, therefore, a German, English,
Italian, Spanish or Chinese Freud will always have a somewhat different
relationship with the fantasies, thoughts and feelings of the recipient in
question, as is invariably the case within the same language community too:
the same Freud text can unleash both an experience of profound being-
understood and wholesale resistance. It may appear banal to state this, but
I should like to recollect it in the context of a reflection on translations in
order to stress the relativity of every translation, which runs counter to the
illusion of transposing a ‘true Freud’ into another language qua translation
(Goldschmidt, 1988; Loewenberg, 2005; Steiner, 1988, p. 192).
To understand these kinds of concepts and tenets of Freud’s as linguistic
references is to label a state of tension that also generates discussions about
the Assumed in the German-speaking analytical community. This process of
translation and transmission from thing to word presentations also forms
the basis of any foreign-language transformation. It is the more or less suc-
cessful interpretations of the Assumed which, particularly in the case of lit-
erary works, are able to create the illusion of reading an original text
(Junker, 1988). Even in the case of specialist natural science translations,
interpretation plays an important role at times, although as great an equiva-
lence as possible is required between source and target languages here. For,
in a way, the translation creates an original since the desired equivalence
between source and target languages can only be approximated.9 “In the
translation, however, as in the description, a ‘remnant’ always remains that
fails to make it through and gets left behind” (Goldschmidt, 1988, p. 10).
What constitutes the distinctive nature of Freud’s authorial style is that it
shimmers between a specialist and a literary text so that by analogy every
translation nestles between the equivalence aimed for and a freestanding
literary creation in the target language, between craftsmanship and the art
of translation (cf. ibid.; Woesler, 2005). Viewed thus, there is not just the
German-language Freud, but also an English, a French, an Italian and a
Spanish one. There the successful translation–transmission of Freudian
ideas into another language allows these to come about in a different sort
of linguistic corpus.
9
This has been impressively argued by the German sinologist Wolfgang Kubin (2001).

998 T. Plaenkers
Besides the idiosyncrasies of Freud’s style, it is the distinctive features of

the German language which create its special expressive possibilities, not
readily found in any other language with its different history. Goldschmidt
(2012) made this clear in his study of the peculiarities of the German
language, emphasizing its space related, lusty, folksy nature. The English
translation of Freud’s oeuvre, by comparison, has endowed psychoanalysis
with a different language corpus, as he puts it in the Standard Edition,
which owing to its high quality was long understood to be an original
Freudian text in the Anglo-American speech area. This translation of Freud
by James Strachey (1887–1967), Angela Richards (1928–1982)
et al. remains a unique historical achievement to this day, taking pains to
achieve great fidelity both to Freud’s original text and to the English lan-
guage. With Freud’s expulsion from the cultural region of the German lan-
guage, not only did the centre of psychoanalysis shift from Vienna and
Berlin to London, the discipline also migrated to the Anglo-American
speech area. As impressively shown by the works of Riccardo Steiner (1987,
1988, 1991, 1994), this was accompanied by terminological redefinitions and
neologisms, which actually set standards: the psychoanalytical world was
increasingly speaking English. Publication of the 24 volumes of the Stan-
dard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud10 in the
years between 1953 and 1974 by Hogarth Press (London) set an edition
standard still unequalled by the German Freud editions. Along comes this
English Freud looking so coherent and cogent linguistically that it actually
creates the illusion of an original. In this context it can only be supposed
that this is also the reason why the Freud translations so far available in
China are all secondary translations from the English.
Riccardo Steiner (1987, 1988, 1991, 1994), in his extensive socio-historical
study, traced the conditions that gave rise to the Standard Edition, which
laid claim to being a definitive standard version. Accordingly, what distin-
guishes it from all subsequent translations is the shifting of the centre of
psychoanalysis to the Anglo-American space, going hand in hand with
Freud’s expulsion from Vienna in 1938 and the totalitarian narrowing-down
of the German cultural space that sustained psychoanalysis. The group of
translators of Ernest Jones, James and Alix Strachey, Joan Riviere, Alan
Tyson, Angela Richards et al. thus found themselves in a quasi-apostolic
relationship with Freud: they were not only tasked with transferring Freud’s
works as fittingly as possible to the English language but had in the process
to lay a linguistic foundation that would form a normative basis for contin-
ued dissemination linguistically and organizationally. And, supported by the
spread of English as a global lingua franca, they succeeded in doing so. The
terminology laid down by the Standard Edition not only became cardinal
among English-speaking psychoanalysts but within a short space of time in
the Anglo-American space created a psychoanalytically inspired conceptual
world that simultaneously created a new perceptual vista for things psycho-
logical (Gast, 2010; Jones, 1924; Steiner, 1987; Strachey, A., 1943).
10
As a result of various of Freud’s works discovered since the publication of the Standard Edition, this
edition is no longer complete either (Grubrich-Simitis, 1987, p. 22).

As is known, there has been extensive discussion on the appropriateness of

the English translation (Bettelheim, 1984; Brandt, 1961, 1966, 1977; Likier-
man, 1990; Loewenberg, 2005; Mahony, 1982, 1987; Ornston, 1982, 1985a,
1985b, 1992). Bettelheim, for instance, with the aid of a long string of trans-
lation examples shows that many of the “most important, original concepts
of psychoanalysis” (ibid., p. 141) in English were translated ‘erroneous’ or
inappropriately in order to achieve wider acceptance in the English scientific
world, which was characterized by positivist pragmatism. According to
Bettelheim, this reflects the endeavour to anchor psychoanalysis as a disci-
pline within medicine, as a natural science, though not as a hermeneutic sci-
ence. Consequently, he sees “much of the essential humanism that permeates
the originals” (ibid., p. 10) being represented in a distorted fashion. Experi-
ence-based concepts have been translated by specialist Greek or English
terms or by technical terms, he says, and thus deprive the Freudian text of
its symbolic richness as well as its emotional closeness; hence, for example,
the choice of ‘Ego’ for (the) ‘Ich’ [= I] or ‘parapraxis’ for ‘Fehlleistung’ [= slip].
The English translators, according to Bettelheim, prefer such abstraction pre-
cisely in order to be able to distance themselves affectively. Many of Freud’s
allusions to classical literature were also lost, thereby introducing the risk of
students interpreting psychoanalysis only as an intellectual system, but not
as a theory deeply affecting them. Tendentially, then, introspective psychol-
ogy would become behavioural psychology.
Bettelheim, by contrast, requires translators to be receptive “to the
author’s efforts to speak also to the reader’s subconscious, to arouse an
emotional response as well as an intellectual one. In short, they must also
translate the author’s attempts to convey covert meanings” (ibid., p. 40).
As much as he is to be agreed with, on the one hand, so too Bettelheim’s
criticism attests to a straitened perspective which ignores both the conceptual
problems of Freud’s original text and the psychological problems of their
English translators. For one thing, Steiner (1987, 1991) refers to the diffi-
culty of really appropriately translating German concepts such as
Vorstellung, Zensur, Seele, Besetzung, Sexualit€ at, Trieb and Wunsch11 into
the English language. At the same time, Freud’s scientific prose referred to
above is the very source of multiple translation problems that arise when
translating into any other language too. Steiner (1987) additionally empha-
sizes that terms of Latin and Greek origin are common in medical language,
and the scientistic English translation of so many Freudian concepts criti-
cized by Bettelheim and others has therefore nevertheless facilitated the
acceptance of psychoanalysis, which at the time was often perceived as offen-
sive in the Anglo-American cultural area. At this point I should like to recall
the terms conceived by W. R. Bion as the alpha and beta function, and the
container. Bion, consciously – and in contrast to Freud’s formation of con-
cepts using everyday language – chose highly abstract concepts to circum-
vent the danger of illusionary pseudo-knowledge. We have absolutely
no idea how the formation of thoughts takes place, but have to confine
11
Translator’s note: These loosely mean, respectively: image/conception/presentation, censorship, soul,
occupation/cathexis, sexuality, instinct/drive/urge and wish.

1000 T. Plaenkers
ourselves to tentative concepts; and this does not detract from the use of
these concepts as clinical tools. On the contrary, their openness was the basis
for their large-scale dissemination and acceptance, and served as a basis for
a large number of clinically fecund works. Rather, incorporation in an
analytical narrative seems to be what gives these concepts substance and
communicative weight. Only in this way is it comprehensible that analysts
are able to make themselves understood at all internationally and, generally
speaking, not too badly either. Isolated discussion about translating single
concepts, on the other hand, disregards this narrative integration. Quinodoz
(2010, pp. 701 ff.), for example, describes the incorrect translation of the
terms Spaltung and Ichspaltung12 in French editions of Freud, ascribing it to
the fact that Spaltung was for a long time neglected in French psychoanalysis
as psychical defence. But is this neglect really supposed to be attributable
solely to an unsuitable translation? Should the question not be, rather, what
did the substantive discussion of these concepts, their thematic integration –
which I term the analytical narrative – look like? For later on in his work
Quinodoz describes the shift in French psychoanalytical discussion to the
origins of Freud according to the weightings of Freud’s works undertaken
by Lacan. Isolated discussions of translation using individual concepts seem
to me to be less sound and informative. Saying that, I have no desire to
argue against conscientious and thorough differentiation of concepts in the
process of translating, although I do argue against the isolating discussion
geared primarily towards linguistic, not analytical narratives. The question
to ask, then, would be whether things are fundamentally any different with
the classic Freudian concepts: the Ego, Id and Superego are by no means
concepts describing clear-cut operating functions of which we command a
detailed knowledge. Rather, they assume their meaning through the analy-
tical narration begun with Freud, as their literary integration into the
German language and the evocative background thus provided. Here there is
a painfully conspicuous absence of critical complete editions of Freud’s texts,
the primary task of which would be to identify the evolution of the Freudian
narrative within the vicinity of a concept.
At the time, Freud justified the choice of everyday language terms as
follows:
You will probably object to our having chosen simple pronouns to denote our two
institutions, or provinces, of the soul, instead of introducing for them sonorous
Greek names. In psychoanalysis, however, we like to keep in contact with the pop-
ular mode of thinking and prefer to make its concepts scientifically serviceable
rather than to discard them. There is no special merit in this; we must proceed in
this way because our teachings ought to be comprehensible to our patients, who
are often very intelligent, but not always learned.
(Freud, 1926, p. 222)
I dare say most analysts today would no longer wish to subscribe to such
reasoning: on the contrary, there is widespread consensus that the language
12
Translator’s note: Splitting/dissociation and splitting of the Ego, respectively.

of our theory is not the one we speak with our patients. A detailed review
would therefore have to be done – and that cannot happen at this point –
to determine whether the translations of pivotal Freudian concepts might
not be better served by the abstract formation of concepts that prevents the
sort of pseudo-knowledge that is readily associated with terms forged from
everyday language and simultaneously attaches greater weight to the analyt-
ical narrative.
That, it seems to me, tallies with the now longstanding experience in the
English language area with ‘Ego’ or ‘Cathexis’, for example, for not only
has their vast linguistic difference from Freud’s German concepts not
impaired the development of psychoanalysis, clinically as well as theoreti-
cally, in the Anglo-American region, but for decades has led to broadly
accepted ongoing developments.
An additional aspect addressed by Steiner (ibid.) is the English transla-
tors’ quasi-apostolic relationship with Freud already alluded to. When
Jones wrote:
…the English translation of Freud’s work under the name of the Standard Edition
will from an editorial point of view be considerably more trustworthy than any
German version…
(Jones, 1957, p. 39)
it seems to relate not just to the standard of the edition. In Steiner’s opin-
ion, moreover, the English translation was suffused with the intention of
integrating Freud into the English cultural space linguistically as well. Jones
seems to have viewed himself as ‘Defender of the Faith’ [‘Fidei Defensor’,
FD] – a title conferred in 1521 by Pope Leo X on the English King Henry
VIII for the latter’s repudiation of Lutheran dogma (and one borne by all
English kings to this day). Practically, this materialized in the form of an
endeavour to make Freud ‘better’ in English in terms of being more ‘scien-
tific’, by reducing linguistic uncertainties and ambiguities in his choice of
terms and ostensibly approximating a scientific ideal of exactness, prefera-
bly by choosing Latin and Greek expressions.
In my estimation the early history of the Standard Edition documented by
R. Steiner simultaneously shows something of the incestuous inheritance
with which post-Freudian psychoanalysts have to grapple. The growing
chronological distance from Freud, increasing internationalization of psy-
choanalysis and redoubled exertions to engage in dialogue with the univer-
sity sciences also provide scope for considering and tackling the problems
inherent in translating Freud’s writings into another language with greater
objectivity and sobriety. Comparing the translation processes in England
and France, for example, it soon becomes clear that the linguistic positing
of the mid-20th century carried out by a small group in England, against
the backdrop of Bloomsbury (De Clerck, 1995), can thus no longer be reit-
erated today. Gratifying the desire for endless intellectual discourse may be
a peculiar French characteristic, as Laplanche (1991) writes, resulting in the
emergence of a plethora of Freud translations in France rather than one
formative standard edition. Nevertheless, given the current status of

1002 T. Plaenkers
contemporary translation theory, I presume that a Freud translation – into

whatever language – can only be the undertaking of a largish group of
experts who have to conduct this discourse.
Yet regardless of whether a group or an individual is doing the translat-
ing, a more or less latent, underlying fantasy is: every translator of Freud is
guided by the endeavour to put the text over ‘as well as possible’, not only
into the target language but also into the reader’s intellectual universe, as
dreamt up by him. For the Standard Edition, Strachey explicated this
dreamt-up reader indirectly in a fantasy about an ‘English Freud’:
The imaginary model which I have always kept before me is of the writings of some
English man of science of wide education born in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
(Strachey, 1966, p. xix)
Here again translating is accomplished as action within a latent object rela-

tionship fantasy. The latter is visualized particularly clearly for us by
reports of analyses performed bilingually (cf. e.g. Amati Mehler et al., 1993;
Flegenheimer, 1989; Greenson, 1950; Javier, 1995; Javier et al., 1993; Perdi-
gao, 2010). The subjective being addressed by the psychoanalyst and by psy-
choanalytical concepts depends, for one thing, on whether the patient (and
here we can envisage Freud’s reader too) is hearing his native language or a
foreign language and, for another, on whether he himself is speaking his
native language or a second language acquired later. I myself was able to
observe this most impressively within the framework of my seminars con-
ducted in Beijing: we generally discuss the underlying psychoanalytical
works in English, i.e. a foreign language for both myself and the seminar
attendees. At points where the discussion started to falter or the partici-
pants fell silent, I urged them to talk amongst themselves in Chinese and
translate for me later. Lively discussion then ensued very quickly, allowing
the attendees to experience their subjective dismay and feed it into the
mutual exchange. This, for me, was a graphic demonstration of the close
link between language and internal object relations, as already made a topic
in 1969 under the aegis of an IPAC panel on language and psychoanalysis
(Rosen and Edelheit, 1970). This, according to the Sapir–Whorf language
hypothesis (Whorf, 1962), addresses the in-depth discussion that places the
linguistic relativity of our understanding and thinking at the centre. Rosen
(1969) also makes reference to Freud’s early theses on the relationship of
thing and word presentations, of language and consciousness (Freud,
1891b, 1895a), which I do not want to go into detail about in this context.
Overall, the literature available on the relationship of language and internal
object relations, of which Amati Mehler et al. (1993) provide a good over-
view, seems to clearly advocate translating the works of Freud into Chinese
and not, as occasionally voiced in IPA circles, making the English Standard
Edition recommended reading for those Chinese people interested in Freud.
With regard to a Chinese translation, therefore, two planes come into focus
initially: a linguistic translation theory plane for one, and a sociocultural
plane for another.

Freud translations in China

In the case of psychoanalysis, translating Freud into Chinese means entering
into a culture of writing that ranks among the most ancient in the world, one
that contributed to a civilization that was, and is, essentially characterized by
that culture of writing. The first written documents can be dated back to the
period around 1250 BC (Schmidt-Glintzer, 2011) and have since been increas-
ingly differentiated out to reach the modern-day figure of 50,000 or so char-
acters. Long before Johannes Gutenberg invented printing in 15th century
Germany, it existed in China where it had been introduced in the 9th century
(ibid.). So successful was this written culture in the development of Chinese
society that it became the jumping-off point for the development of writing
among neighbouring peoples, as with, for example, the Vietnamese, Japanese
and Koreans. The characters not only became a medium of written commu-
nication but also an individually aesthetic form of expression: “Throughout
the world, the three branches of painting, sculpture and architecture exist in
art. Only in China is there an additional art form, the writing of characters”
(ibid., p. 13, referring to Liang Qichao 1925). Even today individual cultiva-
tion and its expression are still expressed in writing in China, and in no other
culture in the world are there such public displays of their manuscripts by
way of reverential admiration for these personalities.
Interest in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud started in China soon
after the end of the empire and the founding of the republic (1911),
although it was selective and not associated with a systematic study of
Freud’s works. Mostly men of letters and artists took up Freud’s thoughts,
and a series of writers sought support in psychoanalysis for a romantic, rad-
ical subjectivism (Zhang Dongshu, 1994, p. 61). Above all, psychoanalysis
was (mis)construed as an ideology of sexual emancipation and hence as a
means of vanquishing the millennia-old dominance of Confucian ethics. But
specialist psychology journals also seized upon the new notions of psycho-
analysis. During this period there was a new and intensified change of direc-
tion towards Western ideas, e.g. Darwinism and Marxism, but also
psychoanalysis (Zhang Jingyuan, 1989); and a series of translations was
started of individual works by Freud, though sadly – as already noted – not
from the original German but secondarily from the English.13 Likewise, a
significant argument against these secondary translations was that they were
not undertaken in dialogue with psychoanalysts, so that doubts as to the
substantive appropriateness of the Chinese translation of key psychoanalyti-
cal concepts are only prudent.14 Furthermore, key concepts were differently
translated by different translators. Psychoanalytical influences were mainly
to be found among the literati during the first wave of reception, therefore,
13
Even Zhang (1989) herself, in her dissertation on Freud’s influence on the literature of China between
1919 and 1949, refers exclusively to the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sig-
mund Freud, not to the German-language original.
14
These doubts have been corroborated many times over in the intervening period: for one thing, by the
group of Chinese IPA candidates who repeatedly point out incorrect and partly missing Chinese transla-
tions in their contact with German training analysts; and for another within the framework of the Ger-
man Freud Chinese Translation Project (FCTP).

1004 T. Plaenkers
and only for the past 20 years or so in the field of psychotherapy (ibid.). On
the whole, however, the critical objections apply both to the initial wave of
reception and translation from 1919 to c. 1940, as well as the second wave,
which began after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) (cf.
Ankenbrank, 2009).
With reference to the literature of China between 1919 and 1949, then,
Zhang Jingyuan critically states:
Yet Freudian theory was not transmitted in a single coherent form, but rather in
bits and pieces over time and in changing social contexts. It was altered in the
course of being translated and explained in China…
(1989, p. 3)
Unlike translations of Freud within the European language community, the

multiple attempts to impart Freudian discoveries to China run into even
deeper rooted differences of a cultural and especially a linguistic nature,
some of which will be set out below, at least in gist.
In contradistinction to German culture, the Chinese culture of writing
boasts a tradition of more than 3,000 years. With “wooden chopsticks,
pointed stones, jade knives or small bronze pins” (Fazzioli, 1986, p. 11)
characters were originally carved into bone and turtle shell, and over a long
process lasting thousands of years the Chinese character system was per-
fected into its present-day form, which finds its highest artistic expression in
calligraphy. If nothing else, the advanced civilization expressed in Chinese
writing caused the German polymath G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) to suggest
even more than 300 years ago that not only should Christian missionaries
be sent to China, but Chinese missionaries to Europe as well (Leibniz,
1697); and nowadays, on a detour via Japan, Buddhism and Taoism have
actually been given wide reception in the West just as, conversely, since the
1920s, the reception of psychoanalysis in China started with the first Freud
translations (by Zhang Shizhao, Gao Juefu, Zhang Jingsheng, Xia Fuxin;
cf. Zhang Jingyuan, 1989, p. 40) as well as introductory articles.15 These
beginnings, merely outlined here, represent the attempt to conduct a West–
East dialogue on the so widely differing concepts of man, his inner life and
his behaviour.
If language is the web in which we capture internal as well as external
reality, then it is directly dependent on our external as well as our interior-
ized object relations, expressed in everyday language as life circumstances
(Amati Mehler et al., 1993; Goldschmidt, 1988; Perdigao, 2010). This is a
fact confirmed many times over, particularly in developmental psychology
terms. The significant differences between the – in simplified terms – Euro-
pean and Asiatic cultures can also be described as a difference in these lin-
guistic networks, since the particular culture of a population creates specific
perceptual and hence linguistic realities. In its clearest embodiment, this
difference between the German and Chinese languages is noticeable in the
otherness of their writing systems. Chinese writing differs essentially from
15
On the history of the reception of psychoanalysis in China, cf. also Zhang (1994).

our own by its completely different speaker–object relation, as well as by

having a different relationship between characters (signs) and language.
Freud himself had already given this some thought:
An extremely ancient language and script, which however is still used by four hun-
dred million people, is the Chinese. You must not suppose that I at all understand
it; I only obtained some information about it because I hoped to find analogies in
it to the indefiniteness of dreams. Nor has my expectation been disappointed. The
Chinese language is full of instances of indefiniteness which might fill us with
alarm. As is well known, it consists of a number of syllabic sounds, which are spo-
ken either singly or combined into pairs. One of the principal dialects has some
four hundred such sounds. Since, however, the vocabulary of this dialect is reck-
oned at about four thousand words, it follows that each sound has on an average
ten different meanings—some fewer but some correspondingly more. There are
quite a number of methods of avoiding ambiguity, since one cannot infer from the
context alone which of the ten meanings of the syllabic sound the speaker intends
to evoke in the hearer. Among these methods are those of combining two sounds
into a compound word and of using four different ‘tones’ in the pronunciation of
the syllables. It is even more interesting from the point of view of our comparison
to learn that this language has practically no grammar. It is impossible to tell of
any of the monosyllabic words whether it is a noun or a verb or an adjective; and
there are no verbal inflections by which one could recognize gender, number, termi-
nation, tense or mood. Thus the language consists, one might say, solely of the raw
material, just as our thought-language is resolved by the dream-work into its raw
material, and any expression of relations is omitted.16 In Chinese the decision in all
cases of indefiniteness is left to the hearer’s understanding and this is guided by the
context. I have made a note of an example of a Chinese proverb which, literally
translated, runs:
‘Little what see much what wonderful.’17
This is not hard to understand. It may mean: ‘The less someone has seen, the more
he finds to wonder at’ or: ‘There is much to wonder at for him who has seen little.’
There is, of course, no question of distinguishing between these two translations,
which only differ grammatically. In spite of this indefiniteness, we have been
assured that the Chinese language is a quite excellent vehicle for the expression of
thought. So indefiniteness need not necessarily lead to ambiguity.
(Freud 1916, p. 231)18
Having come into existence more than 3,000 years ago, Chinese writing,
as the sinologists teach us, has survived to this day in its essential struc-
tures. Of all the graphic systems in this world, it is the one with the longest
lifespan (Lanselle, 2007, p. 53). It is fundamentally different from our
alphabetical writing although it started out like ours, i.e. with drawings,
which initially display more or less similarity with the object being denoted.
16
Translator’s note: cf. also Karlgren, 1923.
17
Here Freud is presumably referring to the Chinese saying 少见多怪 [Shao Jian Duo Guai], where
‘Guai’ here would translate as ‘astonished’, i.e. ‘See Little, much astonished’.
18
These are presumably Freud’s statements to which the former Chinese Minister of Education, Zhang
Shizhao, was referring in a letter of 1929 to Freud, and to which Freud replied on 27 May 1929 (see
above).

1006 T. Plaenkers
That is the stage of the pictograms. But then our writing developed into a
system of differential characters, i.e. characters which in their notation
no longer refer to a denoted object but place the language of the speaker
in its stead. Our writing is phonetic, therefore, dating back to the
Sumerian–Akkadian simplification of language (ibid., p. 28). While ours is
a speaker-centred script, Chinese is object-centred. In this way, the rela-
tionship between speaker and object takes on an interesting, different
weighting.
The Chinese script, then, is ideographic or logographic in that it often
intends its characters to contain the denoted object with its meaning. On the
other hand, the Chinese characters are not pure ideograms either (ibid.,
p. 26), i.e. characters that express one idea only. Admittedly, they do
contain an idea with regard to interpreting the object, but only ever in this
special connection with the pictogram. In addition, the characters often con-
tain supplementations as well, which determine the pronunciation (ibid.,
p. 27), although they make no allowance for local phonetics. Here the char-
acters are composed of parts indicating meaning (the radical) and those
indicating phonetic elements of the pronunciation (the phonetic) (ibid.,
p. 39), and are therefore ideophonograms. This combination evolved in
around 1000 BC. The written characters are subdivided into six main
groups: (1) pictograms (2.3% of all characters), (2) simple ideograms
(0.4%), (3) combined ideograms (2.8%), (4) phonograms (90.9%), (5) bor-
rowings (1.4%) and (6) synonyms (2.2%) (Summers, 1863).19
Considering this breakdown by percentage, it becomes clear that the key
components in a character mostly have nothing to do with the form of the
object. The degree of abstraction realized in the phonograms explains both
the importance and the enjoyment of calligraphy: in tracking down the trail
of the denoted object.
The Chinese script is an isolating or analytical script, which does not
inflect the words and whose syntax is based solely on the order of the
words (cf. Karlgren, 1923). The characters are equivalent to monosyllabic
units whereas the Chinese language, as with other languages, is polysyl-
labic. The words are then pieced together from various monosyllables. At
the same time there are numerous homophones, i.e. identical sounding sylla-
bles (Lanselle, 2007, p. 33), the differing semantic content of which
becomes understandable only through the connection with other monosyl-
lables and through the notation. A further means of differentiation is tone:
thus Mandarin distinguishes four different tones: high level, rising, falling–
rising and falling (Karlgren, 1923, p. 21). But this too is often insufficient
to differentiate homophones so account then has to be taken of the written
character – hence also the great significance of the written characters in the
verbal communication of the Chinese. It enables different ethnic groups,
with their different dialects, to make themselves mutually intelligible. In
fact, Chinese characters are also much more numerous than the syllables
that exist in their language (ibid., p. 36). For example, Mandarin has some
450 different syllables while there are approximately 50,000 different
19
Schmidt-Glintzer also describes a similar breakdown (2011, pp. 8 ff.).

written characters in Chinese. Elementary reading in China today requires

knowledge of some 3,000 characters, while intellectuals have to know 5,000
or more (ibid., p. 37). However, different regions of the country speak
different dialects of Chinese, and even languages with no script of their
own, sharing just one, Chinese. So within China the script assumes the
important function of bridging the comprehension gap between the various
dialects.
Given these peculiarities, there is no autonomous decoding using the
Chinese script as with ours, which allows us to read and pronounce a word
ourselves even if we do not know its meaning. Nor can a Chinese person
pronounce a character he does not know with any certainty (ibid., p. 52).
The script cannot be learned as an isolated script in its own right. In order
to be able to read, a Chinese person must at all times adhere closely to a
‘master’—in the concrete or abstract sense (ibid., p. 55).
As a rule the meaning of a Chinese character is inferred from the context
in which it is used or to which it refers. The contexts outlined by the vari-
ous Freud translators in the shape of character combinations have led to an
irritating multiplicity in the translation of central psychoanalytical concepts.
In his examination of the Freud translation of 1919–1949 alone, Zhang
Jingyuan ascertains: “A wide variety of translations were tried for every
major Freudian term, thereby creating problems of consistency” (1989,
p. 42). Zhang convincingly demonstrates this with the heterogeneous
translations of the terms psychoanalysis, the unconscious, sexuality, Oedipus
complex, hysteria.
In addition, the problems of translation become starkly clear where – in
the context of an alphabetical language, for instance – Freud thematizes dis-
tortions of words by means of mixed-up letters or parapraxes by means of
slips of the pen or typos (e.g. Freud, 1901b, pp. 129–42), a phenomenon
that is non-existent in written Chinese. This represents a problem not just
for a Chinese translation, incidentally (Goldschmidt, 1988, p. 62). So even
in a footnote to the translation of Freud’s Lecture on parapraxes, James
Strachey noted:
It is most unfortunate from the point of view of the translator that Freud chose
slips of the tongue as his most frequent examples of parapraxes in all three of these
lectures, since they are from their very nature peculiarly resistant to translation. We
have, however, followed our invariable practice in the Standard Edition and kept
Freud’s instances, with footnote and square bracket explanations, rather than
replace them by extraneous English ones.
(Strachey, 1963c, p. 31)
Nowhere does the fact that translation happens through interpretation take
on such great importance as the attempt to translate Freud into a non-
Indo-European language, as represented by Chinese, a language without
inflections and tenses, for instance. On the basis described, Chinese simply
has no way of meeting a demand such as the one made of a Freud transla-
tion by Laplanche (1991), that is, to transpose Freud’s sentence structures,
the order of words, logical connections, ambiguities and inconsistencies into
the target language.

1008 T. Plaenkers
A further content-related problem stems from the qualifications of the

Chinese translators. Given that there are no psychoanalysts to date in
China,20 the translators are without relevant experience. Beyond the
fidelity to the text proclaimed by them, therefore, they pursue highly sub-
jective aims, as identified by Zhang Jingyuan with the aid of just four
translators:
Zhang Shizhao wanted to popularize Freud and psychoanalysis in China; Gao

[Juefu] intended to maintain a critical stance toward Freud; Xia [Fuxin] favored the
Freudian theory of mass psychology; and Zhang Jingsheng saw psychoanalysis as a
source of sexual enlightenment for the Chinese audience. Their translations revealed
much about themselves, contrary to their claims of objectivity. As strenuous
adaptations of the Freudian texts into Chinese, their works present interesting
distortions and transferences which deserve a close reading and analysis.
(Zhang Jingyuan, 1989, p. 47)
Thus, for example, Zhang Jingyuan notes critically of Zhang Shizhao, who
in 1930 translated Freud’s Selbstdarstellung [An Autobiographical Study]
from German into Chinese:
In Zhang’s painstaking reproduction of Freud’s autobiography, Freud became a

Chinese scholar, conversant in Chinese classic literature and history. The historical
and national character of Freud’s writing was eradicated, or at least deeply
muffled.
(ibid., p. 48)
It would be impossible to translate Zhang’s text back into the original German,
because the relationship between content and language is quite different in the
original and the translation.
(ibid., p. 50)
By foisting his own value-laden language upon Freud, Zhang turns Freud’s
self-portrait into a self-portrait of Zhang himself.
(ibid., p. 51)
One of the best known Freud translators, as well as the author of works on
psychoanalysis, was the Chinese psychologist Gao Juefu (1896–1992) (Blow-
ers, 1995). Gao translated (see above) – again from the English – Freud’s
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, New Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysis. Zhang (1994) gives an account of Gao’s
critique of Freudian psychoanalysis, clearly showing how little Gao really
understood psychoanalysis; for example, when he reproached Freud for
having “simply included all psychological phenomena unknown to him” (ibid.,
p. 28) among the unconscious or for having defended a pansexualist position.
Here, as from further discussions about Freud summarized in Chinese in
Zhang Dongshu, what above all becomes clear is the intellectually inadequate
and isolated mentality of their authors, to say nothing at all of their complete
20
The first Chinese candidates are currently being trained as psychoanalysts as part of the IPA in Beijing
and Shanghai; at the 2011 IPA Congress in Mexico Dr Tao Lin was the first person to receive direct
IPA membership.

and utter ignorance of therapeutically applied psychoanalysis. This was and is

due to geographical and cultural distance, but also to the many decades of cul-
tivated reserve on the part of Western psychoanalysts in dealings with China,
and it has left its negative traces in the existing Freud translations.
Considering these manifold points of criticism about existing Chinese
Freud translations as well as their incompleteness with regard to Freud’s
oeuvre as a whole, Blowers and Yuan (2005, p. 287) are of the view that:
“…The range and complexity of Freud’s ideas may not be fully appreciated
unless and until translation revisions and translation of more of his works
are undertaken…”.
Examples of translation problems

Nowadays the central concept of the unconscious tends to be translated
descriptively in China. “The Chinese translations of the terms ‘the con-
scious’ [有意识, youyishi] and ‘the preconscious’ [前意识,qianyishi] cur-
rently common in standard usage are clear and require no further
discussion. Turning to the concept of ‘the unconscious’, however, matters
are by no means so clear. ‘下意识’ [xiayishi] is easily excluded as, strictly
speaking, it would be rendered as ‘the subconscious’ – but how do things
stand with ‘潜意识’ [qianyishi]? A number of Chinese translators may pos-
sibly have chosen this translation because the neologism strikes them as
‘more scientific’ in Chinese; maybe also because it rings the changes from
the translations in Japanese, which uses the Chinese characters for ‘无意
识’ [wuyishi]. The objections already mentioned to ‘subconscious’ also
appear to be justified as regards ‘潜意识’ [qianyishi]. It has strong seman-
tic connotations with ‘under water’ and ‘to be hidden’: 潜水 [qianshui, to
dive] etc., 潜伏 [qianfu, to conceal oneself]. This presumably has to do with
the iceberg metaphor of the psyche derived from Freud’s personality theory,
which may be very graphic per se but also happens to be descriptive and
fails to portray Freud’s dynamic understanding of the unconscious. For
these reasons in FCTP we have clearly decided to reject ‘潜意识’ [qianyi-
shi] and instead to choose ‘无意识’ [wuyishi]. ‘无意识’ is everyday lan-
guage, it is neutral (in as far as it contains no explanatory metaphor),
aligning ‘Un-bewusstes’, ‘the un-conscious’ and ‘l’in-conscient’ in its parallel
linguistic structure” (Holdermann, 2009, p. 7f).
An additional example of terminological problems is the concepts of the
second Freudian structural theory. In an already published Chinese glossary
of psychoanalytical terms, based on the glossary of the EPF (European Psy-
choanalytic Federation) (Li Xiaosi, 2006), “we find the following transla-
tions: 本我 [benwo] or 私我 [siwo] for ‘the Id’, 自我 [ziwo] for ‘the Ego’ and
超我 [chaowo] for ‘the Superego’.
What is striking first off is that all three are 我 [wo]. Now since 超我 [cha-
€
owo] matches both ‘superego’ and ‘Uber-Ich’ very precisely, this translation
causes no difficulty. We can be happy with that. But as soon as we take a
closer look at 自我 [ziwo], the problems start. Back-translating, ‘the Ego’
and ‘the Self’ would no longer be distinguishable. ‘The Self’ often occurs in
Freud’s writings to denote the whole person or its psychical representation.

1010 T. Plaenkers
This problem remains unsolved, therefore. How might this difference be ren-
dered in Chinese?
Currently, there is still no entry in the glossary of Li Xiaosi [李晓驷] for
‘the Self’. […] The second problem concerns ‘the Id’. Li Xiaosi [李晓驷]
offers us 本我 or 私我. […] we can easily bid farewell to 私我 [siwo, ‘the
private I’], for if it is indeed the case that people are very inclined to keep
whatever is associated with the unconscious to themselves, 私我 nevertheless
has too strong a connotation of 自私 [zisi, ‘egoistical’]. The fact remains,
however, that 本我 [benwo] is still 我 [wo, ‘I/Ego’]: ‘root I’ or ‘original I’.
Freud arrived at the idea that the Id is the matrix from which all other
instances of the psychical apparatus develop. How might this notion be rec-
onciled with 我?
There are other attempts to translate ‘the Id’ too, but they also appear
problematic. Firstly, the attempt to translate ‘the Id’ phonemically: 伊底
[yidi]. The choice of characters in 伊底 is very appealing; it might be trans-
lated as ‘her (or his) depth’. This solution seems far from ideal, however.
In their translation of the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Laplanche and
Pontalis, 1967) Shen Zhizhong [(沈志中] and Wang Wenji [王文基] opted
for the simple neuter pronoun ‘它’ [ta]. However, there must be genuine
doubts whether such a translation could prove fit for purpose. The fear is
that this would only create a kind of ‘Chinese Laplanchian’. So perhaps we
have to settle for ‘本我’ [benwo]” (Holdermann, 2009, p. 9).
The absence of intertextuality

Any translation of Freud into Chinese, which would already be complicated
enough per se, is not only a translation into another, non-alphabetical, non-
Indo-European language but encompasses deep-rooted cultural differences
and frictions, by comparison with which the problems of translation within
the European language pool seem slight. There exists here a fundamental
problem of transmitting the sense from the German into the Chinese lan-
guage. Translations between different languages within a more or less his-
torically and geographically related cultural area, as, for example, in
Europe, can relate to a collectively shared object world, which ideally will
only be named differently and consequently retained in a cognate linguistic
structure. Jan Assmann (1996) has demonstrated this most impressively with
the polytheistic deity translations of the Mesopotamian culture. China and
Europe, however, share neither a common religious culture – Assmann
speaks of cosmotheism21 – nor a philosophy built around it, i.e. in the sense
of a canon of teachings of wisdom. The frequently absent collective subject
area became evident even back in 1889 when Yan Yongjing translated an
initial Western work of psychology into Chinese: Joseph Haven’s Mental
Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities and Will (1857) (here and
henceforth, I shall follow Zhang Jingyuan, 1989, pp. 37 ff.). Chinese simply
21
“All religions ultimately think the same thing or the Same One, and all deities are one and the same,
because the world is one and the same. That is the Ancient World’s doctrine of monotheistic cosmothe-
ism” (Assmann, 1996, p. 303).

lacked the analogous specialist psychological terms, and at the time the
translator noted in his preface:
Many ideas have not been discussed in China and have no compatible Chinese ter-
minology. All I could do is to connect words together to give them new meanings
… If a reader finds this book awkward in its expressions or imprecise in its mean-
ings, that is because the translator had to create new terms.
(quoted after ibid., p. 38)
The grounding of Freud’s text in crucial intellectual discourses (apt as

that was, for example, in fin-de-si# ecle Vienna [Schorske, 1982] and late-Vic-
torian and Edwardian England), which was non-existent in China – the lack
of intertextuality, in other words, renders any attempt at a Chinese transla-
tion of Freud an initially solitary undertaking. Here, too, there are no stan-
dardized rules for the translation of foreign names and concepts. Zhang
Jingyuan (ibid.) alone found 10 different translations of the name Freud!
Added to this lack of uniformity in the past, the void of missing Chinese
specialist terms was often plugged by borrowings from Japanese. This is
aided by the fact that in Japanese many nouns are written in Chinese. Yet
many of these nouns, to which Zhang Jingyuan (ibid., p. 40) makes particu-
lar reference, have taken on a different meaning.
Thus, no matter how good the translation of Freud’s works from German
to Chinese, it is hampered by the lack of a receptive backdrop among the Chi-
nese educated classes. It is a situation comparable to that described by Jones
with reference to the Americans in a letter of 7 February 1909 to Freud:
They are so concerned in money making as to do practically no original work or

observations. The main difficulty is their colossal ignorance. So far I have not
met one man in America, except of course Brill, who has even read the Traumdeu-
tung [Interpretation of Dreams] …
(Jones, 1909, p. 13)
China currently finds itself in a situation of early-Capitalist awakening, in

terms of its economic history, which also subjects the psychotherapeutic sec-
tor to financial interests. And although these have a bearing in the modern-
day IPA regions too, they are generally balanced out by an educated class
that is actively receptive to Freud’s texts in the context of their own educa-
tional tradition. With regard to the English translation, for instance, Steiner
(1987), writing in the London of the first half of the 20th century, describes
an intellectually broad-minded group which took an open and interested
view of the new boy on the psychoanalytical block – and by no means just
in its clinical references, albeit they were central. Only against this back-
ground was Jones able to found the London Society of Psycho-Analysis in
1913. And only against this background, as shown by Steiner (1987), did
the translation of Freud from German succeed over the decades. The Stan-
dard Edition, after all, was not the sole work by Alix and James Strachey.
Only to a limited extent can we observe a display of comparable open-
mindedness on the part of intellectual groups in present-day China in the
form of independent activities (translations, gatherings, organizations). This

1012 T. Plaenkers
is all the more remarkable since the great number of initiatives by the IPA
China Committee as well as the Clinic of Psychoanalysis are meeting with
great interest on the part of doctors and psychologists. This is only in the
context of Western initiatives for seminars, training courses and confer-
ences, however. The Chinese Psychoanalysis Association and an IPA China
Allied Centre set up are not – yet – developing any independent club life.
This is down to two factors, it seems to me: firstly, psychoanalysis within
Chinese intellectual life lacks intertextual scope for docking. Secondly, the
millennia-old tradition of Confucianism bolstered in recent decades by the
totalitarianism of a Communist dictatorship has led to a lingering passiviza-
tion of independent thinking. It is not for nothing that the art of copying is
also at a premium in China today.
This sets out some of the difficulties faced by a translation of Freud’s
German-language works into Chinese. However, the fact that the situation
in China differs from that in early 20th century England in terms of the his-
tory of ideas and social matters cannot be a counter-argument to devoting
oneself to this undertaking. Psychoanalysis cannot be spread and developed
by propaganda and money alone. But, taking into consideration the
unimaginable dynamic of economic and social development in this, the most
populous of nations on earth, it has the option of remaining outside or
planting the seeds of development in some suitable spot. A translation of
Freud’s works would be one of these seeds.
There is no guarantee of these seeds developing successfully. Whether
Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is committed to the spirit of European
enlightenment and the ideal of the autonomous individual, will be able to
gain greater currency in China than in just small psychotherapeutic circles –
whether Freud, then, really does translate and transmit to China remains
an open question. Thus, for example, the relation to suffering in China is
traditionally different from our Western cultures. In the teachings of Bud-
dhism, Taoism and Confucianism, enduring or bearing sorrow or suffering
plays a central part. This is even symbolized in a phonosemantically con-
flated character, which can be bought in many places in China and will
occasionally be found hung up in Chinese households. It is called Ren (pro-
nounced: zhen, written: 忍) and as a conflated character the upper part
symbolizes a knife, the lower part a heart. What is meant is that the knife
should be left in the heart: were it to be pulled out, death would be inevita-
ble. Enduring suffering, not becoming upset or rebelling against it, but
rather putting up with it and keeping one’s own emotions under control are
among the notions of mental maturity in China. The vicissitudes and evils
of life are taken on the chin like natural events – something bad and regret-
table, but nonetheless inescapable, there to be put up with. Understood
thus, what we have here in the anthropological sense is a contingency expe-
rience, a twist of fate that cannot be influenced and hence is only to be suf-
fered. In this respect traditional China appears to be a pre-modern society,
viewed from our perspective, beyond what we have cultivated as our view
of the individual and society in the wake of the European Enlightenment.
The concept of the individual familiar to us is rooted deep in our societal
structures and the intellectual traditions of Europe, and thus aligns with the
great intellectual awakening we associate with the Enlightenment. During

this period, from the end of the 17th into the 19th century, its exponents
opposed irrationality, opposed religious and state-guided immaturity and
substituted for it the autonomy of the individual, who makes his own think-
ing, his common sense, his paramount guiding principle (Kant, 1784).
Immanuel Kant put this source code of our culture into words:
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is

the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This
immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of reso-
lution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlight-
enment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
(Kant, 1784, p. 1)
In Europe the Age of Enlightenment led to the gradual dissolution of feu-

dalistic and the development of civil society. In place of feudalistic subservi-
ence came the idea of middle-class self-determination. The concept of the
bourgeois, as a member of society who pursues his or her personal interests
and aims, in which he differs from others, forms the enlightened antithesis to
Chinese self-image and identity, which define the individual as a regimented
or conformist part of a social family. Confucian thinking tries precisely to
achieve the social order by integrating the individual into the family and the
groups surrounding it. Putting one’s personal wishes on hold, establishing a
collective group consciousness and striving for dependence define these poles
opposite to our occidental view of man with his striving for happiness, his
consciousness of self, and the goal of personal independence.
This is reflected in the Chinese language and associated philosophy. The
systematic doubt characteristic of European philosophies is non-existent in
China. In China, doubting in order to seek out the truth is met with
Confucian studying, imitating and adapting to tradition (Jullien, quoted in
Usuelli, 2012).
There is currently a break in progress with this traditional consciousness
in a China that is increasingly opening up to Western influences. And it is
just this historic situation which is opening the door for psychoanalysis
there. In so doing, it is taking up the challenge of being more than just one
of the many psychotherapeutic methods there and possibly influencing think-
ing among wider segments of the population outside the therapeutic setting,
as it does in the Western world. But in future it will be just as exciting to see
what connections psychoanalysis can forge in this cultural area with such
basic spiritual traditions of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. The
Freud translated and transmitted to China would then be a Chinese Freud,
just as we now have dealings with Freud in the guise of other languages.
Translations of summary
Als Freud Richtung Osten aufbrach: Aspekte einer chinesischen Ubersetzung € seiner Werke.
Ausgehend von einem Res€ €
umee der bislang erstellten chinesischen Ubersetzungen einzelner Freud’scher
€
Schriften und der Kritik, dass es sich um indirekte Ubersetzungen aus dem Englischen handele, werden
€
die spezifischen Schwierigkeiten der Ubersetzung in eine nicht-indo-europ€aische Sprache erl€autert. Im

1014 T. Plaenkers
Rahmen einer Einleitung werden auch englisch- und franz€ €
osischsprachige Beitr€age zu Ubersetzungsfr-
agen ber€
ucksichtigt.
Cuando Freud se dirigio ! al Este: Aspectos de la traduccio ! n China de su obra. Trabajando sobre
algunas obras espec!ıficas de Freud que al d!ıa de la fecha est!an traducidas al Chino y de la cr!ıtica de
estas como traducciones secundarias del ingles, presentamos las dificultades particulares que supone la
traducci!on a un lenguaje que no es Indo-Europeo y cuyo sistema de escritura es anal!ıtico y consiste en
letras aislado. A manera de introducci!
on nos referiremos a las contribuciones a la traducci!
on realizadas
en lengua inglesa y francesa.
Lorsque Freud se dirigea vers l’Orient: Aspects d’une traduction chinoise de ses œuvres. A
partir de travaux sp!ecifiques de Freud traduites en chinois #a ce jour et des critiques qui ont !et!e faites de
celles-ci en tant que traductions secondaires du texte anglais, nous pr!esentons les difficult!es particuli#eres
qu’engage la traduction vers une langue non indo-europ!eenne dont le syst#eme d’!ecriture est analytique et
les lettres isol!ees. En guise d’introduction nous nous referons #a des travaux critiques en anglais et
franc!ais sur la question de la traduction.
Freud e l’oriente: sulla traduzione cinese della sua opera. Dopo aver offerto un riassunto delle
varie traduzioni cinesi dell’opera di Freud, e una critica delle stesse in quanto traduzioni non dell’origi-
nale ma di versioni inglesi, si discutono le particolari difficolt#a presentate dal tradurre in una lingua non
indoeuropea con un sistema di scrittura analitico e isolante. Tali difficolt#a vengono discusse sulla base
del contributo inglese e francese sugli aspetti teorici della traduzione.
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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94:993–1017 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12058

When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a

(Accepted for publication 9 October 2012)

Working on the basis of a resum! e of the Chinese translations to date of

Keywords: Freud, translation, China, German-Chinese, language

The coherency of Freud’s oeuvre is that of the German language.

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

a very important one – for constructing the psychoanalytical house in

Highly esteemed Professor,

Zhang Shizhao became one of the first translators of Freud in China,

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

Freud lavished great attention on the publication and translation of his

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

It is the modified containment of another language that can add changes of

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

as translation, as translation from the un- and the pre-conscious to the

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

Besides the idiosyncrasies of Freud’s style, it is the distinctive features of

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

As is known, there has been extensive discussion on the appropriateness of

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

contemporary translation theory, I presume that a Freud translation – into

Here again translating is accomplished as action within a latent object rela-

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

Freud translations in China

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

Unlike translations of Freud within the European language community, the

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

our own by its completely different speaker–object relation, as well as by

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

written characters in Chinese. Elementary reading in China today requires

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

A further content-related problem stems from the qualifications of the

Zhang Shizhao wanted to popularize Freud and psychoanalysis in China; Gao

In Zhang’s painstaking reproduction of Freud’s autobiography, Freud became a

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

and utter ignorance of therapeutically applied psychoanalysis. This was and is

Examples of translation problems

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

The absence of intertextuality

Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis

The grounding of Freud’s text in crucial intellectual discourses (apt as

They are so concerned in money making as to do practically no original work or

China currently finds itself in a situation of early-Capitalist awakening, in

Copyright © 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

great intellectual awakening we associate with the Enlightenment. During