C-E Translation Of Unmarked Passive Sentences In The Technical Characteristics Of Auxiliary Motors In The Power Station

The Technical Characteristics of Motors is scientific style whose main feature is its massive use of passive sentences, especially unmarked passive sentences. When the motor factories cooperate with overseas companies, this kind of text needs to be translated. So the first priority is to translate the unmarked sentences in this kind of text. Many sentences in Chinese is passive. Those sentences which have marked words such as ”?”?”?” are called marked passive sentences while those sentences which don't have these marked words but are passive in sense are unmarked passive sentences. Unmarked passive sentences also are called passive sentences in sense, which has rarely been researched by domestic scholars, which makes the research of its translation much less. Therefore, it brings a greater challenge for my research. Grasping the implicit passive meaning in Chinese sentences and determining whether it belongs to unmarked passive sentences are the prominent difficulty. In English grammar, passive sentences generally are marked, which adopts the structure of “be+done”. Because of the difference between Chinese and English grammar, it brings greater difficulties to C-E translation.First, unmarked passive sentences should be defined before the translation of the text. The unmarked passive sentences are passive in sense but not passive in form with certain marked word. Second, the unmarked passive sentences shown in this text are classified into 4 categories:(1) NP+V+(C)+ O;(2) NP+A+V;(3) NP+V+?+C;(4) NP+V+?/?/?. Third, this thesis studies three main functions of unmarked passive sentences and put forward three rules based on them, which are balanced rule, unity rule and coherence rule. At last, this thesis summarizes translation methods of four different types of unmarked passive sentences.In order to achieve different functions of unmarked passive sentences, different translation methods should be adopted. For the structure of “NP+V+(C)+O”, changing the subject is adopted. Considering the context, the major topic is made to be the subject in order to achieve the textual function of giving priority to the topic. As for the structure of “NP+A+V”, adjusting word order is adopted. Translating sentences into passive sentences by using post-positioned adverbial can show the objective and rigorous stylistic function. When it comes to the structure of “NP+V+?+V”, lexical conversion is adopted. Translating complements into predicates can achieve natural representation in the target language. And for the structure of “NP+?/?/?”,addition is used to make the transcript more coherent.