The Strategies of Translating Politeness in Arms and the Man from English into Arabic

Abstract

This study aimed to identify politeness strategies used in both the source text and the target text in Arms and the Man. It also aimed to examine the translation strategies employed by Zaidan in translating polite expressions in Arms and the Man from English into Arabic in the light of Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation strategies. In addition, it aimed to examine the potential relationship between Brown and Levinson politeness theory and Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation strategies. In order to achieve the study objectives, qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The data of this study was taken from Arms and the Man with its Arabic translation, which included 207 polite expressions distributed among five types of politeness strategies. While for data analysis related to translation strategies used for translating polite expressions, Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model of translation strategies was implemented. The analysis of data was achieved by using (SPSS) for finding the frequency and percentage of the used strategies. The findings of the study revealed that the type of politeness mostly applied was bald on record in both English and Arabic. Furthermore, the results of the study showed that literal translation strategy was the most frequently used strategy for rendering polite expressions whereas calque was never used in translating polite expressions. In addition, the study indicated that there was no significant correlation between Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness strategies and Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) model of translation strategies.