A CORPUS-BASED STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES WITH EMPHASIS ON ADDRESS TERMS

With the rapid development of intercultural communication research, the concept of politeness has received considerable attention. This study attempted to investigate politeness strategies in English and Persian with special emphasis on address terms. In this study, politeness strategies were studied from a new perspective, that was, translation. The study was based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) framework in which politeness strategies are delineated in full detail. Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” was used as the text in which politeness strategies appeared. The researcher analyzed the dialogues based on positive and negative politeness strategies with emphasis on address terms. The results showed that there is a direct relation between using address terms and politeness strategies. The translation of different categories of address terms with different positive and negative politeness strategies by two different translators, Gharib and Shakibapoor, indicated that literal translation and deletion were the two translation procedures which were used mostly by two translators, respectively. Cultural equivalent and transcription were the two other translation procedures which were used by them. These translations were categorized according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s and Newmark’s translation procedures.

Politeness, Positive Strategy, Negative Strategy, Address Term, Translation procedure