Article published In:
TargetVol. 12:2 (2000) ► pp.229–240
Politeness in Translation between English and Spanish
If we accept Brown and Levinson’s distinction between positive and negative politeness, it would seem justifiable to accept also that Britain tends to be a negative-politeness society whereas Spain tends towards positive politeness. The paper asks how positive-politeness readers (Spaniards) react to examples of negative (or English) politeness when translated literally. It reports on a smallscale experiment carried out to see how such readers reacted to translations from English of samples of negative politeness and poses the question whether translators (continue to) translate the locutionary dimension (the words) of such texts rather than attempt to convey the illocutionary force (the acts of politeness being performed).
Article outline
- The Question
-
The Experiment
- (1)Request
- (2)Apology and justification
- (3)Giving thanks
- (4)Request for forgiveness before intruding on another by giving advice
- (5)Thanks and justification of thanks
- (6)Apology or warning before giving bad news
- Analysis
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References
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1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
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Hickey, Leo
1991a “Comparatively Polite People in Spain and Britain”. ACIS, September, 2–6.
1991b “Surprise, Surprise, But Do So Politely”. Journal of Pragmatics 151. 367–372.
House, Juliane
1998 “Politeness in Translation”. Leo Hickey, ed. The Pragmatics of Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 1998 54–71.
Lorés Sanz, Rosa
1997 Contribución al estudio de la equivalencia pragmática de las estrategias de cortesía lingüística en la traducción al español de textos dramáticos americanos. University of Zaragoza. [Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis.]
Márquez Reiter, Rosina
1999 “Some ‘Polite’ and ‘Impolite’ Aspects of Requests and Apologies in Spanish and English”. Paper presented at the International Pragmatics Conference on Pragmatics and Negotiation, Pragma99, Tel Aviv University, June 1999.
Vázquez Orta, Ignacio
1995 A Comparative Study of Politeness Phenomena in England and Spain. Duisburg: LAUD.
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