Abstract
There are plenty of passive sentence patterns in English and Chinese, and they are used differently in the two languages, but they do have some similarities. The passive sentence pattern is a kind of sentence pattern relative to the active sentence. Therefore, the use and translation of passive expressions are well worth studying. According to the syntax, contrastive linguistics and translatology, this paper elaborates the evolvement of passive sentence patterns, as well as the differences and similarities of passive sentences in Chinese and English, by comparing them in terms of conception, structure and frequency of use. This paper also probes into the basic methods of translation of passive sentence patterns in Chinese and English, and the errors that are prone to appear in translation as well as the problems that should be noticed in translation.
It is shown in the theses that, in terms of similarities, both Chinese and English passive voice were developed after a long period of historical evolution. They both can be divided into two categories, namely syntax passive and notional passive. Here the notional passive refers to the passive that is without the symbols of the passive，such as “被”in modern Chinese. On the contrary, the syntax passive refers to the passive with the symbols of the passive .In terms of structure they both have the agent of action and the doee. According to the differences, English agent and doee are not as obvious as that of Chinese, some even can be omitted. From the semantic point of view, Chinese passive voice expresses more negative or unfortunate meanings, while English passive voice can express the meaning of commendatory, derogatory and neutral. From the frequency of use, the passive voice in English is more frequently used than that in Chinese.
This paper also probes into the basic methods of translation of passive sentences in Chinese and English, and the problems that should be noticed in translation.
Key words: Chinese；English；passive sentence patterns；comparison ；translation
CONTENTS
Abstract
摘要
1.Introduction-1
2.The concept and usage of the Passive Sentence Patterns-2
2.1The concept and usage of the Chinese Passive Sentence Patterns-2
2.2The concept and usage of the English Passive Sentence Patterns-3
3.Classification of the Passive Sentence Patterns-5
3.1The evolvement of the passive sentence patterns-6
3.1.1The evolvement of the Chinese passive sentence patterns-6
3.1.2The evolvement of the English passive sentence patterns-7
3.2 Notional passive-7
3.2.1The Chinese notional passive-7
3.2.2The English notional passive-8
3.3Syntacticl passive-9
3.3.1The Chinese syntactic passive-9
3.3.2The English syntactic passive-10
3.4The comparison between Syntactic passive and Notional passive-10
4.Features of the Passive Sentence Patterns,comparing with Active sentence patterns.-12
5.Translation of the Passive Sentence Patterns-13
5.1How to translate English passive sentence pattern into Chinese passive sentence pattern-13
5.2How to translate Chinese passive sentence patterns into English passive sentence patterns-15
6.Several problems should be paid attention to when studying passive voice-17
Conclusion-18
References-18
Acknowledgments-20
