Voice Changes in Translation - A Comparative Study of Active and Passive Voice in Chinese and English

By Andrew Methven,
MA Chinese Translation Practice and Theory,
SOAS, London, June, 2006

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1. Introduction

1.1. Voice

Voice is a grammatical category of verbs that is related to what thing or person is acting and what thing or person is being acted upon (Crystal, 1997). A verb is in the active voice when used to talk about what people and things do; verbs in the passive voice describe what is done to things (Swan, 1995). According to Swan, not all verbs can be expressed in the passive voice, for example die, arrive and have are all inherently active. This is related to whether a verb is transitive or intransitive.

1. 2. Transitivity and Argument Structures

“Transitivity is a linguistic system in which… categories characterize different kinds of events and process, different kinds of participants in these events and the varying circumstances of place and time within which events occur. These variations in structure of the clause are said to relate to different world views and to relay different ideological slants.”

Hatim and Mason (1997:225)

According to Fromkin et. al (1991), a verb is said to be transitive when it takes a noun phrase (NP) for a complement (direct object); an intransitive verb is one that does not take a complement. The grammatical dependants of the verb are called arguments (O’Grady et. al, 1987) and the number of arguments a verb can have is known as the valency (Holmer, 1996). We can therefore say that intransitive verbs have one argument (the subject) and a valency of one; and transitive verbs have a valency of two – arguments of the subject and the object. The term thematic role determines the role played by a particular entity in a given event (O’Grady et. al 1987). Thematic roles relevant to this study are the Agent – the doer, the Theme – the entity undergoing action, and the Goal – end point of movement.

The object of an active verb corresponds to the subject of a passive verb (Swan, ibid.), therefore transitive verbs can have a passive voice and intransitive verbs cannot as the latter do not have an object to become the subject of the passive sentence. This is therefore why verbs like die cannot be passive.

According to Hatim and Mason (ibid.) transitivity, can classify processes into action, material and event processes, therefore usage of the passive for example can change how a process is depicted – relaying notions of power, control and responsibility, and therefore possible intentionality and ideology involved. For example, it is widely accepted that the passive in English can be “exploited in impersonal constructions to avoid explicit blame” (ibid.). It is also noted that transitivity in English is used to generate ‘ideational meanings’, for example the passive can be used to make a notion more salient throughout a text while at the same time diverting attention away from ‘true agency’ – presenting events from a ‘static view’. ‘Transitivity pattern’ through the text can also be used cohesively, for example allowing a series of actors to be identified with each other

1. 3 Long and short passives

According to Xiao and Emery (2005), “the passive voice is often used as a strategy that allows language users to avoid mentioning the agent”, and in majority of cases, the subject of the active verb – the agent - is not expressed in the passive. These ‘agentless’ passives are know as ‘short passives’, and the less frequent passives that do have an agent are known as ‘long passives’ (Xiao et al., 2005; Huang, 1999).

1. 4 Notional Passives

According to Kenneth (1993), some verbs in the active voice can express passive meaning, for example these clothes wash well, can have the meaning these clothes are washed well. This type of sentence is known as a notional passive, and occurs both in Chinese and English. Xiao and McEnery (2005) do not include notional passives in their study, summarised in section 2. However as section 3 will show, these are particularly important when considering English to Chinese translation.

2. Comparison of Passive Constructions and Their Usage

There are countless subjective studies of Chinese and English passives. However, the only recent corpus-based comparative study is by Xiao and McEnery (2005). Below is a brief summary of their findings. This article will not discuss derivation and analysis of Chinese and English passives, however for a more detailed summary of English passive analysis and current theory of the analysis of Chinese passives see appendix 1 and 2, and for Chinese short passives, see appendix 3.

2.1 English Passive Constructions

English passives are grammatically marked by a copular verb followed by the past participle of a verb. A copular verb is one that joins an adjective or noun compliment to a subject, for example be, seem, become etc. The unmarked passive form in English is be + past participle, but other copular verbs can be used such as become and get, however Xiao and McEnery restrict their study to be and get, as other copular verbs tend be limited by their semantics.

2. 2 Chinese Passive Constructions

Zhang (2004) states that Chinese being a typical analytic language, the passive voice change is marked overtly through the addition of a passive morpheme, or covertly through implicit semantics (notional passive). According to Xiao and McEnery, Chinese has a wider range of devices to express passive meaning. The most important is bei – which can mark a passive with or without an agent. Bei is simply a device (a passive morpheme) employed to mark the patient status of the subject. Chinese passives take the form seen in sentence (1).

(1) shi-shi-shang, ta-men que yi-ge-ge bei (ren) sha le

 In fact they but one by one PSV (somebody) kill ASP

“But in fact they were will killed one by one (by somebody).”

Xiao and McEnery, 2005

The Chinese passive morpheme precedes the actor, which is optional (as with English), and can also mark the verb when the actor is not present. Although it will be shown that Chinese passives tend to favour making the agent theta role explicit (see 2. 3. 3).

There are several other passive morphemes in Chinese, for example rang, jiao, gei. And the archaic structure wei… suo. But these are also lexical verbs with their own meanings and have not become fully grammaticalized – leading to potential ambiguity when used. According to Tang (2001) gei can also be used as an intensifier that comes before the theme in the passive. Its function is comparable to the particle (PRT) suo in the classical construction, wei… suo. Tang refers to this as the ‘affectedness marker’ that reinforces the affectedness in these constructions. Removing gei, will result in a less emphatic tone. Xiao and McEnery note that Chinese also has a number of lexical verbs that are inherently passive – called automatic passives (similar to notional passives), the most common of which are ai (suffer), shou (endure) and zao (meet with) - see Table 1.

Table 1: summary of frequency of syntactic and lexical passives in Chinese (Xiao and McEnery, 2005)

2. 3. Comparison of Usage

Based on the study of Xiao and McEnery, the differences in usage of English and Chinese passives can be distinguished according to five categories:

2. 3. 1. Frequency

The frequency of passive use in English is far higher, and many writers agree that English has a tendency to overuse passives, whereas Chinese tends to avoid them. In a parallel corpus analysed by Xiao and McEnery only 20% of the English passives were translated into Chinese passives. In Chinese, Bei has a much higher frequency of passive use, reflecting its higher degree of grammaticalisation compared to the other syntactic passive markers.

2. 3. 2. Dynamicity

Get passives only occur in dynamic events, be passives are not sensitive to dynamicity, and therefore can be used in both dynamic and static events, which explains why be passives are more common. In passives where both variants are possible, get collocations tend to be more informal. Chinese passives are only used in dynamic events and can therefore be likened to get passives.

2. 3. 3. Agents in long passives:

The majority of passives in English are short. When the agent does appear, it is introduced by the preposition by. Be short passives are more than 8 times more frequent than their long form, and get short passives are ten times more frequent. Therefore the agent is further down graded and the patient further highlighted in the latter. In Chinese, the overall frequency of short passives is lower, which is because jiao and rang and the wei… suo construction only occur in long passives. English short passives are common throughout whereas in Chinese, long passives are more common in speech and short passives more so in written language (this is also due to the lexicalization of some short passives – see appendix 3).

2. 3. 4. Semantic prosody

Semantic prosody describes the way in which certain seemingly neutral words can come to carry positive or negative associations. Lian (1993) terms passive constructions in Chinese the ‘inflictive voice’, and in particular, lexical passives ai and zao are always negative due to their connotative meaning. In Xiao and McEnery’s study, 50% of all Chinese passives are negative, whereas English be and get passives are only 15% and 37.7% respectively. Many writers now agree that because of language contact, this negative prosody is no longer as strong; however the majority of Chinese passives are still used to portray a negative semantic prosody. This change is apparently more restricted to written language - Bei passives do not show such a negative prosody in official documents and academic texts. In English, get passives are more likely to be used in a negative sense and are typically used to indicate the speakers’ attitude towards events. The collocations of get passives can be highly attitudinal, for example, ‘get paid’, ‘get married’. Such concepts are often the source of debate and contention. Be passives are not used in this way (ibid.).

2. 3. 5 Genre distinctions

Be passives are high frequency in abstract and technical genres, especially official documents and academic prose - typically used to impose an objective, formal style. Written genres show low frequency of get passives, which are most likely to appear in spoken genres. There are also stylistic differences in get passives, occurring more with verbs of daily occurrences like dressed and washed, and also with informal or slang expressions like chucked, nicked etc. This suggests that get passives are more informal in style. Chinese passives do not have the function of objectivity as with be passives, and therefore are relatively low in scientific and other technical genres. Chinese passives are most frequent in religious texts, and detective novels, and least frequent in news editorials and official documents (ibid.). Passive markers gei, jiao, rang are generally very rare in written genres and are considered colloquial usages by all writers. According to Wu and Zhou (2004), jiao and rang are typically spoken in northern dialects, whereas gei is typically spoken in southern dialects (Li, 1994).

2. 4. Summary

Thanks to the work of Xiao and McEnery, it has been shown that the usage and implications of the passive in Chinese is very different to that of English. Therefore the manipulation of transitivity to convey intentionality and ideology (Hatim and Mason) in English is unlikely to be reflected using same constructions in Chinese due to genre and semantic restrictions. Therefore having recognised such patterns in an English text, alterations to the transitivity patterns have to be implemented in order to reflect the same relations of power and ideology in the target text. Below is a discussion of some of the techniques used in English – Chinese translation.

3. Contrastive analysis of English and Chinese passives in translation

According to Li et al., (2003) English passive voice can be used when the actor does not need to be mentioned or if there is no way of knowing the actor, to give prominence to the patient, because of politeness, and even for textual convenience (cohesion), whereas in Chinese the passive is used to express the adversative result of a dynamic passive action.

Another important difference to recognise is one of typology. Li and Thompson state that one of the characteristics of Chinese as a typical topic prominent language

“…is that the passive voice appears as a marginal construction, rarely used in speech. The relative insignificance of the passive… [can be explained by] the topic, not the subject, that plays a more significant role in sentence construction. Any noun phrase can be the topic of a sentence without registering anything on the verb. It is, therefore, natural that the passive construction is not as widespread in [topic prominent] languages as it is in [subject prominent] languages.

(1975: 467)

Therefore, it follows that in the majority of cases, syntactic passives in English should be translated into active Chinese sentences. And according to Lin (2005), even when there is implicit passive meaning, this will not manifest itself formally (see ‘notional passives’). Xiao and McEnery point out that notional passives in Chinese can also be viewed as topic-comment sentences where the subject argument is the topic and the remaining constituents are the comment. They conclude that these are not passive sentences. However from a translation perspective, it is important to recognise that notional passives are an invaluable tool for translating English passives.

Many passives in English are simply translated as true active sentences in Chinese, as in 2 and 3:

(2) Zhe-er yao xiu gengduo de gong-lu

 Here will construct more  GEN road

“More highways will be built here”

(3) Da-mi zhu-yao chan  zai nan-fang

 Rice mostly produce in  south

“Rice is mainly grown in the South”

Lin, 2005: 74

Xie (2006), notes that often the fronted patient in the English passive can remain in the sentence initial position in the Chinese translation, but as the topic. In 3 (above) and 4, 5 and 6 (below), word order is unchanged.

(4) Ting-zhong qing bao-chi  su-jing

 Audience please maintain  silence

“The audience are requested to keep silent.”

(5) Jue-yi yi-zhi tong-guo

 Resolution consistent  pass

“The resolution has been unanimously adopted.” 

Zhang (2006: 107)

(6) Dian-neng ke-yi chuan-song dao hen yuan de di-fang

 Electric power able transmit  to very far GEN place

“Electricity can be transmitted over long distances”

Lin, 2005: 72

In many instances, word order is affected. Another method is to take the subject of the passive English sentence and move it to the object of the Chinese active sentence, as in (7):

(7) Qi-ta fang-fa wu-fa  zhi-zao zhe-xie tong-wei-su

 Other method cannot make  these isotope

“These isotopes cannot be manufactured in other ways.” 

Ming, 2005: 67

Different elements of the English passive can also become the subject in translation, as in (8), where a place adverbial becomes the subject (although according to Li and Thompson’s analysis this is technically the topic).

(8) Zhong-guo zai si-qian nian qian fa-ming le zhi-nan-zhen

 China at 4000 year before  invent ASP compass

“The compass was invented in China 4000 years ago.”

Ming, 2005: 67

Translation of the English passive voice is not just a simple case of translating into Chinese active or notional passives, and often, other changes need to be made. Many writers agree that there is a tendency in Chinese notional passives to profile an actor, even when it is indefinite. It is common to find terms such as ren-men (people), you-ren (somebody), da-jia (everybody) or wo-men (us) as a generalized actor in a Chinese notional passives translated from (short) English passives (Ming, 2005).

(9) Ru-guo you-ren xiang ni ti-chu you-guan si-shi went-ti, bu-xu hui-da

 If someone to you ask  about private question, no need answer.

“If you are asked personal questions, you need not answer.”

Ming, 2005: 68

According to Li and Thompson, English as a subject prominent language uses

“…dummy or empty subjects, such as… it and there… This is because in [a subject prominent] language a subject may be needed whether or not it plays a semantic role”

Li and Thompson, 1975: 467

Therefore there is no need for such passive constructions in Chinese, and according to Ming (2005), these ‘it-cleft’ structures can be translated as generalized subjects (see 9 and 10); or as verbs such as ju (‘according to’) – see (11 and 12).

(10) Ren-men xiang-xin wei-lai yao sheng-guo xian-zai

 People believe future will exceed present

“It is believed that the future will be an improvement on the present.”

(11) Ju gu-ji  ceng you yi-liang-qian zhong

 According estimation once  have one two thousand type

 Mei-zhou yin-di-an-ren  de yu-yan

 American Indian people GEN language

“It is estimated that at one time there existed from one to two thousand American Indian languages.”

Ming, 2005: 67

(12) Ju-shuo gong-ren-men dui ta dou hen tong-qing

 According-say workers  to him all very sympathetic

“It is said the workers all regarded him with sympathy”

Lin, 2005: 73

Zhang (2001) lists a number of the most common it-cleft structures in English and their corresponding Chinese translations, some of which are listed below:

1. “It is found that…” → ju fa-xian

2. “It is well known that…” → zhong-suo-zhou-zhi

3. “It is reported that… ”→ ju bao-dao

Sentence (2) is a set phrase in Chinese, which is a good example of the difficulties encountered in the translation of the English passive - see 13.

(13) Zhong-suo-zhon-zhi  zhe-xie dao-yu xiang-lai gui-yu zhong-guo guan-xia

 Everybody everywhere know these islands always belong China govern

“It is common knowledge that these islands have always been under Chinese jurisdiction”

Lin, 2005: 73

Another way to express a passive meaning in Chinese without explicit marking is using the ‘copular structure’ (COP) (Zhang, 2005; Ming, 2006). This structure consists of the verb ‘to be’ – Shi, which comes after the subject and before the object, which is followed by the nominalising particle (PRT) de. Ming states that when the English passive describes stative instances such as time, place, composition and method, this notionally passive structure can be used in Chinese, and relevant constituent can be placed within this frame.

(14) Ai-zi-bing shi 1983 nian zai ren-ti bai-xue-qiu nei fa-xian de

 AIDS COP 1983 year at human white blood cell in discover PRT

“The AIDS virus was first found in white blood cells in 1983.”

(15) Shi-jian wan-wu dou shi yuan-zi gou-cheng de

 World all thing all COP atom form PRT

“Everything in the world is made up of atoms”

Another characteristic unique to Chinese is the ‘subjectless sentence’, which is also a consequence of being a topic prominent language. This is a very common structure and is typical of texts expressing point of view, attitude, warning, requests and appeals (Lin, 2005). In translation from English passives, the subject becomes the object of the subjectless sentence (Ming, ibid.).

(16) Zai xu-duo guo-jia  hen shao xiang quan-wei ti-chu zhi-yi

 At many country very rare  towards authority raise challenge

“Authority is rarely questioned in many countries.”

(17) Bi-xu li-ji zhong-zhi zhe tao-yan de zao-yin

 Must immediate cease this terrible GEN noise

“That unpleasant noise must be stopped immediately.”

When an English passive describes a dynamic event, with a clear passive action, and especially if it is adversative, the sentence can be translated as a passive construction in Chinese with the addition of a passive morpheme (PSV) (Liu, 2001).

(18) Di-ren bei  da-bai le

 Enemy PSV defeat ASP

“The enemy was defeated.”

(19) Wo ma ye gei  ci le

 My mother also PSV fire ASP

“My mother was also fired”

Xiao and McEnery, 2005

(20) Mi-Mi jiao  ta cai zhun le

 Secret PSV her guess right  ASP

“The secret was found out (by her)”

(21) He-dong-li wei  ke-xue-jia suo ren-shi yi-you duo-jiu le?

 Nuclear power PSV scientist  PRT know already how long ASP?

“How long has nuclear power been know to scientists?”

5. Conclusion

This article has shown the difference between passives in Chinese and English in terms of frequency, genre and semantic prosody. Passives in English are common, and the two main types (be and get) are characteristic of different genres – written/technical, and spoken respectively. The changes between active and passive voice in translation have also been illustrated. In the majority of translations from English, a change occurs from syntactic passive to notional passive or active sentence in Chinese, and therefore a change in transitivity structures occurs. Chinese is a topic prominent language, and in the majority of cases, uses the passive as a special structure, to express a negative semantic prosody. There is also a clear need for further research of Chinese notional passives and the changes in transitivity structures encountered in translation.

6. References

1. Chao, Y. 1968. Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Berkeley: University of California Press)

2. Crystal, D. 1997. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Second Edition. Cambridge,.

3. Fromkin, V, Rodman, H, Hyams, N. 1991. An Introduction to Language. Thompson Wadsworth,.

4. Hatim, B. Mason, I. 1997. The Translator as Communicator, London, Routledge.

5. Holmer, A. 1996. Typology, a case link. Lund University, Dept of Linguistics. Working Papers 45, pp 63-78.

6. Huang, C. T. 1999. Chinese Passives in Comparative Perspective. Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, No. 29, pp 423-509.

7. Kenneth, W. 1993. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press.

8. Li, M. 2001. ‘Bei, shou, ai’ ju bian (Differences in the words bei, shou and ai). Journal of Tianjin Adult Higher Learning Vol. 3, No. 3, 44-46.

9. Li, C, N. & Thompson, S. A. 1975. The Semantic Function of Word order: a case Study in Mandarin. In Li. C. N (ed.). Word Order and Word Order Change, pp 457-490. University of Texas Press.

10. Li, Y & Li, H. 2005. Yinghan Huyi Zhong Yutai de Zhuanyi (On Translation of Active and Passive Voice between Chinese – English and English – Chinese translation). Journal of College of foreign Languages, Yan’an University. Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 113-116.

11. Lian, S. 1993. Ying Han Duibi Yanjiu (Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese) (Beijing: High Education Press).

12. Liu, M. 2001. Yingyu Beidong Yutai de Yuyong Fenxi Ji Qi Fanyi (Translation and Analysis of the Translation of English Passive Voice). Chinese Science & Technology Translators Journal. Vol. 14, No. 1, pp 1-4.

13. Ming, Z. 2005. Yingyu Beidong Yutai de Yifa (Discussion on the Translation of the Passive Voice in English). Journal of Chongqing College of Education, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp 66-68.

14. Swan, M. 1995. Practical English Usage. Oxford University Press.

15. Tang, S. 2001. A complementation approach to Chinese passives and its consequences. Linguistics 39/2, 257-295.

16. Wu, M. and Zhou, X. 2004. Beiziju Jiao Rang Beidongju Zai Jiaoxue Yufa Zhong de Fenlei (On the detachment of ‘bei’-marked passive sentences from ‘jiao rang’-marked ones in Chinese pedagogical grammar). Journal of Yunnan Normal University, Vol. 2, No. 4, 66-71.

17. McEnery, A. M. and Xiao, R. 2005. Passive constructions in English and Chinese: A corpus-based contrastive study. In: Corpus Linguistics, 14-17 Jul 2005, Birmingham, UK.

18. Xie, J. 2006. Qianxi Ying Han Beidong Yutai de Huyi Fangfa (Intertranslation of Passive Voice between English and Chinese). Journal of Hunan Arts and Science University, No. 3. pp 137-139.

19. Zhang, X. 2006. Ying Han Beidong Yutai de Hanyi Jiqiao (Techniques of Translating English Passive Voice into Chinese). Journal of Foreign Languages Department, Anyang University, pp 107-109.

20. Zhang, Y. 2004. Qiantan yingyu beidong yutai de hanyi jiqiao (On the Translation Skills of English Passive Voice into Chinese). Journal of the Department of Foreign Languages, Shenyang Normal University, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp 110-114.

Appendix 1: Comparison of the Analysis of English and Chinese Ananlysis

According to Holmer (1996) the passive in English is formed by,

“…[a] passive morpheme… attach[ing] to a verb, absorbing its “agent theta role”. The removal of this role implies the loss of the verbs ability to assign ‘object case’ to its compliment. Consequently, the compliment is forced to move upwards to look for Case, which it finds in the subject position. Thus the affixation of a passive morpheme leads to the deletion of the Agent of the clause and the promotion of the patient to the subject of the clause.”

According to Huang (1999),

“…the usual assumption [in English] about the suppression of the subject theta role is that it is suppressed by the passive ending –en… As a typical analytic language, Chinese does not have any inflectional morphology, and it is the nature of an analytic language that what happens in the morphology of a synthetic language [ie English] often happens at the syntactic level. Therefore it is acceptable to say that passive morphemes in Chinese absorb the subject theta role of the VP compliment.”

Appendix 2: Analysis of Chinese passives

There is much contention as to what syntactic role bei plays – Chao (1968) first claimed it was a preposition, similar to by, where as other writers claim it is a verb (Tang, 2001). According to Huang, there have been two types of contrasting theories for the analysis of Chinese passives. One of which is one of NP movement, which is typical of English passives, where the underlying object moves to the surface subject position in the presence of the passive morpheme bei – absorbing the accusative case of the theme object of an active sentence, and de-thematising the subject position of the verb, bei itself is considered to be the prepositional head of a prepositional phrase. The other theory is that no movement takes place and that the Chinese passive is the result of VP Complementation, whereby bei as a matrix verb, takes on an embedded clause whose object is deleted under identity with the matrix subject. Huang convincingly shows that both theories can be simultaneously ‘correct and incorrect’ and that they complement each other. Huang himself supports a more recent theory which is said to be similar to the ‘tough structure’ in English, which involves a null operator movement and predication. According to this analysis, the passive involves both complementation and movement.

Appendix 3: Derivation of the mandarin short passive

Huang presents a strong argument against the short passive in Chinese being derived from the long passive, based on seven criteria including accessibility of deletable object, chronology of emergence (short passive earlier than long) and positions of adverbials. Huang proves that the short passive in Chinese is not simply derived from the long passive – instead it is handed down from the archaic passive construction and that some archaic short passives have indeed been fossilized. The short passive has both a lexical and a phrasal form, the former dates back to ancient Chinese, which was highly monosyllabic. Bei is the head of the two syllable compounds that later became cliticised into V-V compounds which are common in modern Chinese. Eg. bei-bu (arrest) and bei-fu (capture).

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