Translation, as a means of conveying information, is more intricate than it may initially appear, especially when dealing with the passive voice in English and Arabic. This complexity becomes evident in Arabic-English translation, where passivization involves distinct structural and functional differences that directly affect translation choices. Translating the passive requires careful handling of agentivity, emphasis, and style, as direct equivalent forms do not always exist between the two languages. Since Chomsky’s (1957) syntactic analysis of passive transformations in English is characterized by the auxiliary “be” and the preposition “by”, the linguistic rationale behind these passive constructions has been widely studied. Such transformations aim to convert active sentences into passive ones, often to foreground the patient or topic and achieve grammatical and stylistic economy. However, Arabic does not employ “be” or “by” in passive constructions; instead, it relies on specific verb patterns and often suppresses or omits the agent, which accounts for the relative rarity and functional specificity of the passive in Arabic. This study is a conceptual-theoretical review that examines the contrastive form, function, and pragmatic effect of the passive voice in English and Arabic, and surveys the translation strategies most often invoked to handle English passives when rendering them into Arabic. Rather than reporting an empirical assessment of a defined translator sample, the paper clarifies the structural and functional contrasts in passivization between the two languages and identifies common strategies—including active-voice conversion, nominalization, agent omission, and patient promotion—together with the contextual conditions that favor each. The aim, accordingly, is to enhance translators’ awareness of how choices in passivization influence meaning, rhetoric, and readability, and to support more accurate, context-sensitive translation practices that respect the grammatical and pragmatic norms of both languages.
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