PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN: COMMON ERRORS IN STUDENT TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

Voice is a grammatical category of verbs in both English and Albanian. However, there are significant differences in the use of the passive as well as in its formation in these two languages. The aim of this study is to compare passive voice constructions in English and Albanian, while focusing on the difficulties that students face when translating between the two languages. The difficulties that students may encounter as well as the errors that they make are expected to be related to two aspects: there are structural differences- in English there is only one way of forming the passive regardless of the tense whereas in Albanian there are three different ways of forming non-active voices depending on the tense and mood of the verb. The other aspect is functional – in English there is only passive voice as opposed to active voice, while in Albanian except the active voice there are three voices which are formed by non-active forms of the verbs: the passive voice, the middle voice and the reflexive voice. A mixed method approach was used in this study. The descriptive method was used to describe the use and structure of the passive in both languages. From this description we can define the differences and similarities. The qualitative research method was used to analyze the errors and the error patterns of the passive translations while the quantitative method was used to analyze error percentages.The participants of the study are first-year IT students of intermediate English level from University Mother Teresa.The materials used to conduct this research are translation exercises. The first exercise consists of six English passive sentences and the second exercise consists of six Albanian non-active sentences. These sentences were supposed to be translated into Albanian, respectively English. In addition to these two exercises, two questions were given for the students to answer. Both questions are about the number of voices in these two languages and which those voices are. According to the analysis, the differences between English and Albanian passive structures and usage lead to the errors that students make while translating, which will be further discussed in the paper. A limitation of the study is the relatively small number of participants, however these results serve as a solid basis for further studies. Finally, recommendations are provided to enhance teaching strategies for reducing errors and improving the proficiency of Albanian students in both their mother tongue and in English as a foreign language.