A Report On English-chinese Translation Of Passive Voice In IMO Documents

As a specialized agency of the United Nations,the International Maritime Organization(IMO)is mainly responsible for vessel navigational safety and prevention of marine pollution.On the way to constructing marine economic powerful nation,it is very significant for China which has vast maritime territory and abundant maritime resources to figure out and implement the IMO's conference spirit.Meanwhile,it's also important for the translation of maritime documents.Among the maritime documents related with IMO,the passive voice accounts for a great proportion.The documents or papers related to maritime English tend to use the passive voice so frequently to emphasize the objectivity of the statements.Due to the different language conventions,relatively less passive voice occurs in Chinese,so a lot of passive voice in English will be translated into active voice in Chinese.At the same time,the translation should be readable and fluent,which requires that the translators should make a detailed analysis with regards to the source language(such as meaning,structure,and logic).Under the guidance of functional equivalence theory,the translation methods of English passive voice are as follows:(1)translating English passive voice into Chinese passive sentences;(2)translating English passive voice into Chinese active sentences;(3)translating English passive voice into Chinese sentences with no subject;(4)translating English passive voice into Chinese declarative sentences.Besides,the translation strategy that literal translation is preferred to liberal translation is applied to the text,and the specialized terminology is used correctly to make the translation more professional and faithfully.