A Study On The Chinese Translation Of Passive Sentences In Wuthering Heights

Passive voice is an important but complicated linguistic phenomenon existing in languages all over the world. In English and Chinese, it is no exception. Researches on the passive voice and the translation of passive sentences have always been the focus for some grammarians, linguists and translators. Admittedly, these studies have made great contributions to linguistics and translation studies. And they have also helped a lot on this study as well. But at the same time, limitations also exist. For example, most of the previous studies on the passive sentence are restricted only to a structural comparison between English and Chinese, having ignored the comparisons at the semantic and pragmatic levels. And those structural comparisons are far from being systematic as well. The research data for their translation are also picked with randomness, subjectivity and one-sidedness.Based on the achievements and experience of the previous studies, this thesis aims at analyzing the translation of passive sentences in Wuthering Heights. To study the translation of two languages, we should know their similarities and differences very well. Therefore, as the theoretical foundations, a contrastive study on passives between English and Chinese is made in this thesis. The contrastive analysis of passives is made in these three aspects: syntactic structures, semantic functions and pragmatic functions. On that basis, this thesis continues to summarize the similarities and differences existing in the three aspects. Following that, the thesis goes further by exploring the equivalence in the translation of English passives. However, due to the actual existence of linguistic and cultural differences, it is hardly possible to achieve ideal equivalence in translation. The thesis selects its research data from the classic novel Wuthering Heights and its two Chinese versions translated by Yang Yi and co-translated by Zhang Ling & Zhang Yang respectively. Both versions are well received by the readers in China. Instead of evaluating their gains and losses, strengths and weaknesses, this thesis only intends to investigate the translation strategies of the passives in the English novel. From the perspective of translation equivalence, which is further divided into syntactic equivalence, semantic equivalence and pragmatic equivalence, the thesis analyzes the translation of the passives in Wuthering Heights. All passive sentences in the novel have been carefully picked out and reasonably categorized. The corresponding translations of each passive are also provided for study.There are more than 700 passive sentences in total in Wuthering Heights, with the non-prototypical passives ranking the first in number. After a careful analysis of those data, the study has come to the following findings: First, similarities of English and Chinese passives exist in the aspects of syntactic structures, semantic functions and pragmatic functions. Second, differences of passives between English and Chinese in the aspects of syntactic structures, semantic functions and pragmatic functions also exist. Third, not all English passives should be translated into Chinese marked syntactic passives. Translation in that way only applies to a small proportion of passives to achieve the syntactic equivalence. In reality, most of the passives should be translated into Chinese active sentences by adjusting the word order, amplifying or omitting to achieve the semantic equivalence. Still other passives should be translated such a way as to achieve the pragmatic equivalence by adopting the methods of literal translation or free translation. In a word, to produce a good translation, we should not literalize in the simple translation shift, but take flexible translation strategies in different cases and obtain the desired effect of the original. As the study shows, both translators of the two versions can deal with the passive sentences flexibly to produce a faithful translation, come close to or achieve the goal of translation equivalence.There is reference value lying in the research for understanding the passive sentence and its translation into Chinese. At the end of the thesis, it explains the limitations of the present study, and further points out the suggestions for a future study.