Translating the French passive voice into Spanish: A linguistic or translative matter?

Abstract

It is usually said that the use of the periphrastic passive voice, composed of the auxiliary verb “To be- être – Ser/estar” and the past participle is more frequent in French than in Spanish where it coincides with the “reflexive passive”. In terms of translation, Spanish grammarians praise the use of the active instead of the passive voice, indicating that in particular cases the Spanish periphrastic passive can be used. The translation of the French passive voice into Spanish would then be just a grammatical issue easily solved with rules. Besides the fact that the rules are not clear, six translations into Spanish of Madame Bovary show just the contrary. Except in some few cases, translators face a real translation problem, for whose solution they have to make a choice. Tow groups of translators are distinguished. The “sourcistes” who tend, in general, to keep the passive voice (particularly a periphrastic passive), eventhough the statement doesn’t present the configuration proper for its use in Spanish; their interest is fidelity to the effect produced by the original. Translators of ciblistic orientation tend to use the active voice, they seem to be more interested in “orthonymics”, for what is “common usage”, influenced by the grammatical-linguistic discourse that promotes the use of the active voice, not taking into account the reality of language and its realizations.