The Chinese word "苏格拉底" is formed by phonetically transliterating the name "Socrates", with each character representing a syllable from the original name: 苏 (sū) corresponds to "So", 格 (gé) to "cra", 拉 (lā) to "te", and 底 (dǐ) to the "s" sound, creating a sound-based approximation in Chinese characters.