Naslov
Passive Voice in Translation of the Croatian Text into English – a Case Study

Autori
Knežević, Božana ; Brdar, Irena

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Annual Conference 2011 : abstracts / - , 2011

Skup
American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference 2011

Mjesto i datum
Chicago (IL), Sjedinjene Američke Države, 26.03.2011. - 29.03.2011

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
passive; legislative discourse

Sažetak
This paper is based on the study of the translation pairs of passive sentences found in two legislative texts. We explored grammatical (passive and passive-like) and thematic structures in Croatian and English on the basis of small corpus - 23, 140 words. The results of the study indicate that a) the se passive is the most frequent construction with the passive meaning in Croatian, and in the majority of cases it is translated by “agentless” be passive in English, b) the be passive is confirmed as the typical passive in English, c) a change in the grammatical structure does not always trigger a change in the thematic structure in translation. In a significant number of cases it is word order that shows the function of thematic shift and not the passive. Throughout the study it was unexpectedly difficult to identify the unique properties of the Theme and the passive, and establish the relationship between the passive and other similar constructions. Although the study was restricted to the analyses of the passive / passive-like forms in the Croatian and English pair texts, none of the established features of the passive, for example: the correlation of the passive subject to an active object, the be-passive (+ agent) or the se passive, represents the passive voice uniquely or completely. This makes this and future research interesting. In addition, all those engaged in translation need to get the message across that the thematic structure in translation, as long as the translated text unfolds easily, should be respected. It is a valuable aid to assess whether a translation is good or not.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA