Abstract: The research aims at the sentence pattern with inanimate subject in Chinese-English literature translation with reference to the common nouns and conscious verbs derived from the sentences with inanimate subject in an authoritative comprehensive English corpus. Four types of sentence pattern with inanimate subject have been analyzed and 25 conscious verbs have been discussed with numerous examples from a translation corpus. Abstract nouns play an important role in the sentence pattern with inanimate subject.Certain differences have been detected from the comparison between the translation corpus and the English corpus. The two corpora, however, share many striking common features in contrast with the Chinese Learner English Corpus. This fact calls for substantial attention to the sentence pattern with inanimate subject in the English teaching in China.