Article published In:
Pragmatics: Online-First ArticlesTranslating politeness on public notices with a directive function in Thessaloniki
A cross-cultural perspective
This paper examines notices with a directive function that have been translated from Greek into English in the
public spaces of Thessaloniki. In particular, it explores the ways in which Greek politeness is expressed and how this politeness
is rendered in the English translation of the original Greek texts. The paper uses photographic data collected in 2020. Using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) concept of
face, the methodology used is a combination of the qualitative ethnographic approach employed in contemporary linguistic landscape
research and Bourdieu’s habitus approach used in the sociology of translation. The analysis shows that the translations examined
often retain aspects of Greek politeness strategies, affecting the message of the English target text to varying degrees.
Keywords: politeness, translation landscape, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, translation studies, ethnography
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical background
- 3.Data and methodology
- 4.Analysis
- 4.1Official notices
- 4.2Ad hoc notices
- 4.3Texts in businesses providing services
- 5.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Lees, Christopher
2023. Chapter 6. Politeness in notices translated from Greek into English in Thessaloniki’s public spaces from a cross-cultural perspective and translator/student translator evaluations. In Pragmatics and Translation [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 337], ► pp. 121 ff. ![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
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