English Translation
His house is surrounded by trees.
Confused about using “sein” instead of “werden” for the passiv voice here
That has to do with the “Zustandspassive”. For a detailed explanation I recommend you to search about “Vorgangspassiv vs. Zustandspassiv” (a couple of examples, in german, here or here). But as a quick summary:
In German you can build the passive in two different ways, depending on whether you are talking about a process (Vorgang-) or a state (Zustand-) (although I was told that there is bit of discussion about whether the second one is really a passive, or just “sein + an adjective”). The first one uses werden, while the second one, sein.
Thinking about it, I feel this difference might be made in english by using the progressive aspect. So maybe you could translate this sentence like:
His house is surrounded by trees. → Sein Haus ist von Bäumen umgeben.
His house is being surrounded by trees. → Sein Haus wird von Bäumen umgeben.
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