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Old May 05, 2012, 02:49 PM
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wrholt wrholt is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lauraashley View Post
Gracias.
En la tercera frase, quiero decir "One day, Jorge was given a dangerous job."
Quote:
Originally Posted by micho View Post
La traducción literal no funciona en este caso. Inténtalo como te dije antes en castellano con "se le + verbo en pretérito, singular, 3ª persona + complemento indirecto + complemento directo". O con "le + verbo en pretérito, plural, 3ª persona + complemento indirecto + complemento directo"
What is the active voice equivalent of your sentence? "One day, someone gave Jorge a dangerous job." The subject is "someone", the direct object is "a dangerous job", and the indirect object is "Jorge".

The English passive voice is very flexible. One can choose either the direct object or the indirect object as the passive subject. Both of these sentences are perfectly acceptable English:

a. "Jorge was give a dangerous job." (indirect object as subject)
b. "A dangerous job was give to Jorge." (direct object as subject)

The Spanish passive with 'ser' is much less flexible than the English passive: one can use ONLY the DIRECT OBJECT as the subject. The indirect object of an active voice sentence is forbidden as the subject of a passive voice sentence. Translating sentence 'b' using the passive with 'ser' gives us:

"A Jorge le fue dado un trabajo peligroso."

As micho says, it is more common to express this using the passive with 'se'.

Last edited by wrholt; May 05, 2012 at 02:53 PM.
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