Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2011)
VOICE PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATIONS OF ROMANIAN AND ENGLISH ECONOMIC TEXTS
Abstract
The difficulties brought about by the passive constructions have been an issue to debate for many linguists and scientist. Translations become ever more important in an increasingly global marketplace, and they are sometimes taken too lightly, when in fact it is a serious business that should be approached sensibly in order to avoid poor results. Translation is a specialised branch of translation, which requires specific skills and also methodology, theme as well as terminology competences. Without being exhaustive the aim of our paper is to focus on the types of the passive constructions specific to the scientific discourse, the economic one, in particular. It also tackles the translation difficulties that may come along when dealing with scientific papers and rendering texts from Romanian into English. Passive constructions are frequently used both in English and Romanian. However, active forms are more common in literary writing or where the focus is on the people who make things happen. In contrast, passives are mainly specific to texts where the focus is on events and processes, in things that happen. The most common problem in writing economic texts is overusing the passive voice. Specialists recommend or even require the passive voice in scientific, technical writing; motivating that by using the passive voice in scientific writing it achieves an objective tone whereas, sometimes it only obscure the text. The scientific discourse and the economic one in particular, basically mean presenting ideas, descriptions, definitions, classifications, instructions, etc. The speech is brief, the technical person, and the scientist managing to say things which in ordinary language would require a vast amount of talk. Therefore, speakers or writers use the passive constructions in the scientific discourse for the following reasons: a) when there is no use of identifying the agent of the action, being unimportant or obvious from the context; b) to avoid repetition of the subject; c) to put emphasis on the action or the process; d) to convey objectivity; e) to avoid a long active subject.
