Due to the different thought pattern English likes the passive form. It is very common for them use the passive expression. While, the Chinese usually used the passive form together with the agent of the action; otherwise the notional passive is used instead.
“In English, on the other hand, when the agent or doer of the action expressed by the predicate verb is to emphasized, we make it the subject of the sentence, which is thus in the active form. Or when the subject of the action is to be emphasized, we make the object of the verbal action the subject of the sentence and the sentence is thus said to be in the passive form. From this conception, it is clear why the agent of the action is usually not expressed in an English sentence in the passive form, just contrary to the Chinese construction.” [20]
Both of these thinking styles have left their respective marks on Chinese and English. The animate subject of the Chinese sentence and the inanimate subject of the sentence in English best exemplify the case. In describing or explicating, an animate subject is adopted in the Chinese language as the agent of action whereas an inanimate subject is usually preferred in the English language.
3. 4 Straight Thinking vs. Converse Thinking
Different nations might take different angles in their observation and ways of thinking. A manifestation of this in language is that different or even complete converse linguistic forms might be adopted in describing or explicating the same phenomenon. For example, priority is considered an honor or privilege in Chinese culture, and to show his politeness or courtesy, a-Chinese would ask his guest to eat or go first by saying“您(先) 请!”，a phrase literally meaning "You do this (before me), please". In English the counterpart of“您(先)请!”is "After you".“先”(before) is rendered into "after"(后)in English, completely opposite in sequence.
English people are different from the Chinese in expressing time sequence. In the English language, "back" refers to the past time and "forward" to future time. In sharp contrast, the Chinese refer back with “前”(forward) and forward with“后”(afterward). It can be said that the Chinese is "facing the past time" (or past-oriented) in expressing chronological sequence, i.e.“前/后年(last year/next year)，前/后人(predecessor/successor)，前/后世(previous incarnation/afterlife)"; the English are "facing the future". For example, "the weeks ahead of us/the following weeks" means“以后/未来的几个星期’’in Chinese . In a word, on temporal matters, "back" in English is equivalent to“前”and "forward" to“后”in Chinese, the negligence of which fact would lead to mistranslation.
Due to different forms of expression for the same content, different nations might adopt completely different perspectives in observation or, in other words, the different thinking styles. For example“九五折”in Chinese becomes "5% off’ in English, for the Chinese focus on the actual rate of payment after discounting, whereas the English people have their eyes on the rate of discount.
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