Take a perfectly ordinary French sentence: Ce livre m'a enchanté. An inanimate object is doing something — the book enchants, and a person receives the effect.
Now translate it mechanically: This book delighted me. Nothing is broken, but few English speakers would put it that way. They would move the human into the subject slot: I was delighted by the book, or simply I loved that book.
Same meaning, different voice, different centre of gravity. This is modulation through voice change, the first of six modulation techniques we will work through.
First, what is modulation?
Modulation is a translation procedure that changes the point of view from which something is said, while leaving the message intact. Where transposition alters grammatical categories, modulation alters the angle: what was active becomes passive, what was negative becomes positive, what was concrete becomes abstract.
It is the procedure you reach for when a translation is grammatically flawless and still reads as a translation. The words are right; the perspective is foreign.
Voice change is its most structural form, because it redistributes the roles of who acts and who undergoes.
Direction 1: French active → English passive
French is comfortable letting things act on people. A book can enchant, an idea can haunt, a piece of music can move you. This is animism: granting inanimate subjects the grammatical behaviour of agents.
English is more reluctant. It often prefers the affected human as grammatical subject, with the thing demoted to an agent phrase introduced by by — or dropped entirely in favour of a different verb.
- Ce livre m'a enchanté. ↔ I was delighted by that book. / I loved that book.
- Cette idée le hantait. ↔ He was haunted by that idea.
- Ce raisonnement ne me convainc pas. ↔ I am not convinced by that argument.
- La nouvelle l'a bouleversé. ↔ He was devastated by the news.
Two qualifications, because the tendency is real but gradient. First, English can perfectly well say that book delighted me; it is simply less frequent in ordinary usage. Second, the test is not the presence of an inanimate subject but the naturalness of the resulting sentence — always read the literal version aloud before rejecting it.
Direction 2: English passive → French active — the bigger phenomenon
The reverse movement is the more systematic of the two, and the one that costs learners the most points. English uses the passive far more than French does. Where English passivises, French very often reaches for the impersonal pronoun on or a pronominal verb.
- English is spoken here. ↔ Ici on parle anglais. / L'anglais se parle ici.
- He was told to wait. ↔ On lui a dit d'attendre.
- The decision was taken last night. ↔ On a pris la décision hier soir. / La décision a été prise hier soir.
- This book sells well. ↔ Ce livre se vend bien.
- The door opened. ↔ La porte s'est ouverte.
The case where French has no choice at all
English can make the passive subject out of an indirect object. French cannot, under any circumstances.
- I was given a book. ↔ On m'a donné un livre. (never je suis donné…)
- She was offered the job. ↔ On lui a proposé le poste.
- He was asked to leave. ↔ On lui a demandé de partir.
This is not a stylistic preference but a structural impossibility, which makes it the single most reliable trigger for this modulation. Whenever an English passive has a person as subject and a verb that takes to in French, reach for on immediately.
The reverse trap
French speakers writing in English over-produce we and one where the passive is expected: On a observé une hausse becomes an increase was observed, not one observed an increase. Scientific and administrative English lives in the passive; French does not.
Why the two languages diverge
French tolerates animism, lets objects occupy the subject slot, and disposes of two ready alternatives to the passive — on and the pronominal form — which it uses constantly.
English prefers a human experiencer as subject when there is one, and otherwise uses the passive freely, including with indirect objects and in contexts where the agent is unknown or irrelevant.
Behind the grammar lies a difference in narrative focus. French frequently tells the story from the side of what happens; English from the side of who it happens to.
A caution about English style
English style guides campaign against the passive, and the campaign is mostly justified in journalism and corporate prose, where it hides responsibility. But the advice does not transfer to translation: choosing the passive because French would sound animist in English is a linguistic decision, not a lapse in vigour. The rule is naturalness in context, not passive-avoidance as dogma.
When to apply this modulation
Going from French into English, consider the switch when you see:
- an inanimate subject — an object, an abstraction, an event;
- a verb of emotional or psychological effect on a person (enchanter, hanter, frapper, toucher, surprendre);
- a human being sitting in the object slot, waiting to be promoted.
Going from English into French, switch when you see:
- a passive with no expressed agent — on is almost always the answer;
- a passive whose subject corresponds to a French indirect object — on is the only answer;
- a passive describing a general property — the pronominal form usually fits (se vendre, se dire, se faire).
Conclusion
Voice change shows that translation does not preserve grammatical structures; it preserves naturalness. Sometimes a sentence only sounds right once it has been turned inside out, the person brought to the front and the thing pushed to the back.
Because in French, the book enchants.
In English, you are enchanted.
Same magic, opposite vantage point.