In both English and Vietnamese, we use passive voice to put more attention on the fact, the action or the result of the action. We want to focus more on the recipient than on the performer, as a result, the doer or the agent is often omitted.
English
Vietnamese
Structure: be + P.P
“bị/được/do” + transitive verb (“bị/được/do” considered as a signal of passive voice, similar to “get/be” in English).
Sentences have passive voice (that can hardly be recognized) in the structure: relative pronoun + be “The standard (which was) based on evaluation of Government, was broadly popularized”
Passive voice has no “bị/được” but it can be added without changing the sentence’s meaning:
“Tiêu chuẩn dựa trên sự đánh giá của Chính Phủ đã được phổ biến rộng rãi trong nước” “Tiêu chuẩn được dựa trên sự đánh giá của Chính Phủ đã được phổ biến rộng rãi”.
Differences.
- The formation of Vietnamese passive voice is mainly based on the lexical meaning or grammatical status of the words "bị/ được/ do". Although in some cases, the passive meaning is mainly understood by the semantic meaning of the whole sentence. English passive voice is marked by the form of the verbs (Be + P.P).
Cơm chín rồi. The rice has been cooked. - In English, the structure "BE+ P.P" can change depending on the certain subject and tense while in Vietnamese, the words "bị/ được/ do" never change their forms.
- In Vietnamese, the structure "bị + V" goes along with the negative meaning and "được + V" goes along with positive meaning. In English, no matter what positive or negative meaning, there are no change in the structure "BE+ P.P".
- Passive voice is used more often in English than in Vietnamese. Or we can say Vietnamese prefer active form. So, if we translate English - Vietnamese word by word, it can make our translation sound not natural.
