The Use and Translation of Chinese Passive Voice into English: A Case Study based on ‘To live’ by Yu Hua (1993) and its English translation

Abstract

This research aims to comparatively analyze how Mandarin Chinese passive constructions are translated into English based on a pair of books, which are Yu Hua’s To live and its corresponding English translation by Michael Berry. A mixed qualitative and quantitative method is used in the current research. Results show that the Mandarin passive voice can be translated both into the English passive voice and the English active voice according to the varied meanings of contexts (positive, negative, and neutral), while the former is the overwhelming majority. The most frequently used Mandarin BÈI-construction can be generally regarded as an equivalence of the English BE-construction. It has also been found that the frequency of using passives to express negative issues is very high in Mandarin, and the use of the type of Mandarin passives relates to the meaning of contexts.