INFLUENCE OF DIRECTNESS AND INDIRECTNESS ON VERBAL POLITENESS AND POLITIC BEHAVIOUR IN SUBTITLED TRANSLATIONS FROM ENGLISH INTO SERBIAN

Abstract

The paper deals with assessing the degree of directness, indirectness and politeness transferred in subtitled translations into Serbian of a representative sample of dialogues from the sitcom Friends and five US feature-length films. The aim of the research is to shed light on the link between directness, indirectness and politeness in the original dialogues and their subtitled translations, which represent three closely related concepts in politeness studies. Starting from the more traditional Brown-Levinsonian (1987) views on these phenomena, the paper will try to discuss the problem of politeness in subtitled translation from a more recent, post-modern point of view, which sees politeness only as a marked form of politic, i.e. socially acceptable and appropriate behaviour (Watts et al. 2005). Bearing in mind the differences in dominant cultural expectations and scripts between Serbian and US audiences, as well as the technical constraints of subtitling as one of the two prevalent modes of audiovisual translation, it is expected that the two sets of dialogues – the original ones in US English and their subtitled translations into Serbian – will show considerable differences when it comes to the varying degrees of directness and/ or indirectness they convey in cases of interrogative forms functioning as requests, orders, suggestions or statements. However, it is also expected that these differences will not automatically lead to conspicuous consequences in terms of politeness, since being verbally polite is here viewed as a form of politic behaviour in the specific contexts of both the source and the target cultural matrix. Applying qualitative research methods, the analysis is carried out by means of exemplifying and describing the aforementioned phenomen.