What it is
A voice change replaces an active clause with a passive one, or a passive with an active. The proposition is the same either way. What changes is which participant occupies the subject position and whether the agent is named at all. One case has consequences beyond form: an agentless passive rendered as an active clause, where the target needs a subject and the source provided none.
The classification of this operation is contested. Vinay and Darbelnet treat active for passive as a modulation type, a change in the point of view from which the situation is described. Catford would call the same sentence pair a structure shift, since the configuration of clause elements has changed. Chesterman files it under clause structure change, among the operations grouped in G6. Which description applies depends on whether the change is regarded as one of viewpoint or of structure, and no evidence settles that. The practical residue is not trivial: classified as modulation the change looks like a stylistic option, classified as a structure shift it looks like a mechanical consequence of the grammar, and for the agentless case both readings mislead.
Voice change should be kept apart from converses, where the argument roles are reversed through a lexical pair such as buy and sell and the voice is untouched.
When it applies
- Frequency norms for the passive differ, as they do between administrative German or Turkish and plain-language English.
- The source passive exists to hold one element in subject position and the target can hold it there by other means.
- The source uses an impersonal construction with no target counterpart, such as a subjectless passive.
- Genre convention prescribes a voice, as in instructions and methods sections.
- The agent is named elsewhere in the document, so an active clause is available without introducing anyone.
Examples
TR>EN
- Source: Başvurunuz reddedilmiştir.
- Target: Your application has been rejected.
- Comment: The Turkish passive names no one, and keeping the passive is the only rendering that also names no one. "We have rejected your application" reads more naturally as correspondence and states what the source declined to state: which office took the decision. In administrative writing that is precisely the information the construction was chosen to withhold.
FR>EN
- Source: On m'a informé de la décision.
- Target: I was informed of the decision.
- Comment: The French indefinite personal subject has no comfortable English counterpart: one is the wrong register, and they attributes the act to a group. The English passive removes the subject slot altogether. Here it is the target passive that preserves the source's silence about the agent.
DE>EN
- Source: Es wurde beschlossen, das Verfahren einzustellen.
- Target: A decision was taken to discontinue the proceedings.
- Comment: The German impersonal passive has no subject at all. English needs one, and the candidates are a dummy subject, a nominalization as here, or a named agent. Only the third adds information: the first two are a question of register, the third a substantive decision.
Watch out for
The rule that governs professional practice is short. Converting an agentless passive into an active clause supplies an agent the source withheld, and that is a change of content rather than of style. The withholding may be evasion, or deliberate drafting that fixes a duty without fixing who discharges it, or simple ignorance. The translator is not in a position to decide which, and the reader of the target text is entitled to the same uncertainty as the reader of the source.
- Where the agent is stated elsewhere in the document, an active clause is available: name the agent the document names, not the obvious one. If identification requires an inference, keep the passive.
- Passive frequency is a real target norm, and reducing it is legitimate in explanatory, commercial and journalistic registers. It is not legitimate in statutes, judgments, contracts and administrative decisions, where the allocation of responsibility is often the substance of the sentence.
- Where the target has no natural passive for the construction at hand, reach for a nominalization or an impersonal form before promoting a participant.
References
- Vinay, J.-P. & Darbelnet, J. (1958). Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais: méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. English translation by J. C. Sager & M.-J. Hamel (1995), Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, Benjamins Translation Library 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 36–39.
- Catford, J. C. (1965). A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, p. 77.
- Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory. Benjamins Translation Library 22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. Revised edition (2016), Benjamins Translation Library 123, Ch. 4.