MANAGING HUMAN-TO-HUMAN APPROACH WITH NO HUMANS PRESENT: A LOOK INTO POLITE FORMS OF ADDRESS IN SOFTWARE LOCALIZATION

Abstract

Using examples extracted from the author’s work on software localization i n the field of automobile industry (English translated into Serbian Serbia locale), this presentation centres on the issue of polite forms of address. Since software localization relies on the resources from linguistics, business and marketing, and informa tion technologies, politeness is considered in relation to all three aspects: 1) as an important element of human to human approach to marketing, whereby 2) the use of personal pronouns has to be taken into account considering the differences between Engli sh and Serbian, and contextualized within 3) the largely impersonal process of localization itself. The analysis of the examples aims at defining certain patterns which could potentially facilitate practical work in this branch of translation studies.