First of all, I apologize for the bad pun. One of the many things about Japanese language that has frustrated me is describing that something became something else. Japanese has a few ways to describe this. That wonderful fellow Tae Kim has a nice overview of the subject so I won’t reinvent the wheel.
However there is one point worth mentioning that still confused me. For example I didn’t understand what the difference was between 中止になる and 中止する. The word 中止 (ちゅうし) means cancellation or to cancel. The first word above means to be canceled, such as a meeting or baseball game. The second word means to cancel something. The first is a state that something has or will become, while the second is an action undertaken by someone. Although I knew this I still got a little confused on how to translate this into English.
For 中止になる I think this can be translated as “to get canceled”, while 中止する means just “to cancel”. For another word like 再開 (さいかい reopen, restart, etc) it’s the same thing. 再開する means to reopen while 再開になる means to get reopened. Or for getting fired from a job, 首になる (くびになる) means to get fired while a boss might fire someone using 首する.
Little bits like this help us Japanese-language students take one step closer toward proficiency. Good luck! 
This blog is the reflection of my efforts to explore fatherhood, Buddhism and my love of Japanese culture. Anything useful I can pass along makes the Internet hopefully a better place.
My impression is that ‘ni naru’ expressions are more vague, more situational–’the situation was that X happened.’ If you want to be a bit more explicit with an agentive subject-like thingy (I am not sure that ’subject’ as a grammar term, as understood in English, really applies in Japanese. Jordan–the textbook I studied–uses ‘nominal’) then you could say ‘X ga Y wo chushi ni suru.’ Or something like that…
(I am not a Japanese expert, just a confused user…)
JL
Hi Johnl,
You may well be right. Based on the examples I’ve seen, it sounds more like a direct (i.e. you did something) vs. indirect (something was done) type expression. It’s not really found English the same way I think, but I could be wrong.
Where it gets really confusing is in keigo, when most anything seems to have “ni naru” tacked on at the end. It makes it indirect and thus polite. Like, you order something at a restaurant, and when the waitress brings your order she might say, “Kohi ni narimasu.” I have heard this referred to as an example of why keigo is in a state of confusion these days, but I don’t understand keigo well enough to comment on that. But it is nice to know that’s what’s confusing to Japanese language learners in regards to keigo is often confusing to native Japanese speakers.