彼は課長に昇進しました。

For some reason I'm expecting this sentence to be in passive form. Google tends to disagree with me. Is 昇進 just passive in and of itself, or am I missing something?

Looking at in now, making it passive would make it mean he was promoted by the chief rather than promoted to chief... Now I'm even more boggled.

It's fairly simple to understand IMO.

彼は課長に昇進しました。

昇進 is a noun and used here as a する verb as far as I can see, に - target particle, 課長 section chief, 彼 - he.

He was promoted to section chief.

I what boggling you is that the Japanese is clearly an active sentence, but the English is passive.

Perhaps instead of 'be promoted' an active verb like 'advanced' or 'rose' would capture this fact better? But I think "He rose to section chief" sounds a bit odd. "He rose to the position of section chief" sounds better but has some extra words.

Perhaps this is just one of those sentences where an exact, natural sounding translation is not possible?

C.J.

"He was promoted to section chief" is perfectly natural AND exact. Good translations never match the sentence structure of the source text.

If that frazzles you, don't take a look at かぶる.

cjon256 Wrote:I what boggling you is that the Japanese is clearly an active sentence, but the English is passive.

Perhaps instead of 'be promoted' an active verb like 'advanced' or 'rose' would capture this fact better? But I think "He rose to section chief" sounds a bit odd. "He rose to the position of section chief" sounds better but has some extra words.

Yeah, that might be it.

J7 Wrote:"He was promoted to section chief" is perfectly natural AND exact. Good translations never match the sentence structure of the source text.

"He made section chief" or something like it would have made things less boggling, though.

QuackyShu Wrote:If that frazzles you, don't take a look at かぶる.

What's wrong with かぶる?

kazelee Wrote:

QuackyShu Wrote:If that frazzles you, don't take a look at かぶる.

What's wrong with かぶる?

Probably referring to sentences like ほこりをかぶった机 (A desk covered with dust).