The voice, why does it suffer? 🤕
Sometimes we should avoid using the passive voice. Especially if we want to define and show the character of a scene.
Recently I came across an article with a strong voice for justification written by Caitlin Schneider. She highlighted the major problem of journalism in the present time.
The magazine headlines as well as the speeches on the news should be informative. But it happens that the journalists prefer to omit some facts to make the audience be intrigued and stay tuned, to manipulate their time as long as possible. They started hiding the subject of the action and using Страдательный залог (to translate literally, it will sound like “the suffering voice”. I suppose the explanation will be excess).
The passive voice is a means of disarmament. You can’t fight an enemy that doesn’t exist. (c) C. Schneider
I recommend you to read her article because here we’ll discuss the way of translation and how the phrases may sound in Russian to push your boundaries. If we want to discuss a topic, we must be unbiased as much as possible. Speaking about the news, it’s highly important. Two countries look at the problem differently.
The title of Schneider's article is “Rubber Bullets Don’t Fire Themselves”. Can you give a try and translate it into Russian?
Let’s do it together over again.
“Rubber Bullets” means “резиновые пули”.
“Don’t Fire” means “не стрелять” — if you give the order or if you need to link it to the main subject (we’ll use the given bullets), then you change it into plural present tense —> “не стреляют”.
Then we get: “Резиновые пули сами себя не стреляют”. But still, it doesn’t sound well enough… Do they shoot? Have they started the shooting process? Nope, the officers do that. We have to add a prefix to the verb to make it clear.
If we study the Russian words focusing on the tone that the prefixes reveal to make a word, I say, colourful and deep, we notice the difference.
You can say “застреливают” (to gun down), “обстреливают” (to shell, to bombard), “пристреливают” (to shoot rather immediately and from the short distance), “выстреливают” (usually the Russian people say “выстрелить из пистолета” means from the gun and that’s the very verb we need right now).
Eventually, we get the correct Russian translation:
“Резиновые пули сами себя не выстреливают”.
My team is a set of books and a good playlist and of course your support. When you enroll in any language course, pay for it but do you feel satisfied with the result? We never know it beforehand. Here I share my understanding of the language and some phrases that will help you to grasp the logic of the Russian language. If you find my tips and ideas useful then…
I offer you to expand your vocabulary and translate the following phrases.
1) Tear gas is being deployed.
2) A photographer was shot in the eye.
3) A television reporter was hit by a pepper ball on live television.
If you want to check out then send them to tweedledee6@mail.ru.