# This novel was written by a great Arab poet



## aurelien.demarest

Hi guys,

I read some topics regarding the _passive voice_, and I just starting learning it and I would like to know whether this sentence is correct please?

_This novel was written by a great Arab poet_
كُتِبَت هذه الرواية بشاعِر عربي شهير

thanks in advance
Aurélien


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## Banet Eagle

aurelien.demarest said:


> _This novel was written by a great Arab poet_
> كُتِبَت هذه الرواية بشاعِر عربي شهير



The preposition that is equivalent to "by" in this case is من قبل.
Moreover, "great" would be better translated as "عظيم" or "كبير". The adjective "شهير" means "famous" or "well-known".
The rest of the sentence is correct.


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## aurelien.demarest

Hi Banet Eagle,

thank you for your answer.
So this is okay right?

كُتِبَت هذه الرواية من قبل شاعِر عربي عظيم

Aurélien


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## Banet Eagle

Yes. That's perfect Arabic. However, although "عظيم" is perfectly okay, "كبير" is more common to describe poets.


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## aurelien.demarest

Thank you  Banet Eagle


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## Lark-lover

كتب هذه الرواية شاعر عربي كبير


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## cherine

I agree with Lark-Lover. This sentence is best expressed in the active voice, not the passive. But if you really need to use the passive, you can say كُتبت بِيَدِ شاعر كبير or كتبت مِن قِبَل شاعر كبير . And though من قبل is becoming widely used in MSA, I still believe it's not perfectly correct Arabic.


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## akhooha

> you can say كُتبت بِيَدِ شاعر كبير


I was always taught that using the passive verb plus بِ to denote the agent of the action (which how it works in English) is not permissible in Arabic. So, I'm wondering:
If we can say كُتبت بِيَدِ شاعر كبير what is there to prevent us from doing away with the idaafa and just saying كُتبت  بِشاعر كبير ?


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## cherine

akhooha said:


> I was always taught that using the passive verb plus بِ to denote the agent of the action (which how it works in English) is not permissible in Arabic.


I agree with this and more. The way I was taught the passive in Arabic was that there was no need to mention the agent in the first place. Although I wasn't taught this specific rule about the ب not being permissible.


> So, I'm wondering:
> If we can say كُتبت بِيَدِ شاعر كبير what is there to prevent us from doing away with the idaafa and just saying كُتبت  بِشاعر كبير ?


While I still prefer the active voice, and only barely accepting بيد شاعر/على يد شاعر , I think that كُتبت بشاعر feels like the poet himself was a tool in writing, not the person who wrote. It's like كُتبت بقلم .


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## akhooha

Thank you Cherine. It's interesting to see how grammatical structures from other languages appear to be creeping into MSA...


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## ayed

I concur with lark-lover.
If you want to express the same sentence in passive voice, you could say:
*هذه الرواية كتبها/ألفها شاعر عربي كبير*


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## aurelien.demarest

Thanks guys for your help.

Aurélien


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## suma

I often hear 
بقلم شاعر عربي كبير
and even that can be shortened to:
بشاعر عربي كبير


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## Bakr

suma said:


> I often hear
> بقلم شاعر عربي كبير
> and even that can be shortened to:
> بشاعر عربي كبير


أتفق معك على
بقلم شاعر عربي كبير
ولكن
بشاعر عربي كبير 
لن تفيد المعنى..ورغم هذا الحديث عن المبني للمجهول وعدم ذكر الفاعل، أرتكب مثل هذا الخطأ عند الترجمة
كتبت هذه الرواية من طرف/من قبل شاعر عربي كبير


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## jack_1313

cherine said:


> This sentence is best expressed in the active voice, not the passive.



Elaborating on this: in English, like in Arabic, we generally avoid the passive voice. But one of the reasons that we might want to use it is to put the focus of the sentence on what would normally be the object of the verb by bringing it to the front (front focus, in linguistic terms). _This novel was written by a great Arab poet_ would be appropriate in a paragraph about the novel, as opposed to a paragraph about the poet.

In Arabic, the flexibility of the subject/verb/object word order allows us to move the object forward in the sentence, thus adding focus to it, without switching into the passive voice. That's why this sentence would be better translated into Arabic using the active voice.


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## fdb

jack_1313 said:


> Elaborating on this: in English, like in Arabic, we generally avoid the passive voice. But one of the reasons that we might want to use it is to put the focus of the sentence on what would normally be the object of the verb by bringing it to the front (front focus, in linguistic terms). _This novel was written by a great Arab poet_ would be appropriate in a paragraph about the novel, as opposed to a paragraph about the poet.
> 
> In Arabic, the flexibility of the subject/verb/object word order allows us to move the object forward in the sentence, thus adding focus to it, without switching into the passive voice. That's why this sentence would be better translated into Arabic using the active voice.



If I may modify this a bit: the difference is not in the “word order”, or in “moving the object forward in the sentence”. If you say: 

kataba l-muʼallifu l-kitāba

then al-kitāba is the direct object (مفعول) of a verbal sentence. But if you say:

al-kitābu katabahu l-muʼallifu

then al-kitābu is the topic (مبتدأ) of a nominal sentence. So these are two different types of sentence.


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