Translating politeness
strategies is challenging for translators as they need to maintain the level of
politeness from the source language to the target language. These challenges
arise from cultural differences in politeness norms. Responding to this issue,
this research focuses on the translation of directive speech act utterances
containing politeness strategies performed by George and Mary Cooper in
the TV series Young Sheldon. The study aims to identify the types of politeness
strategies used, to analyze how the directive speech act utterances containing
politeness strategies in the Young Sheldon TV series translated, and to
assess the translation quality of directive speech act utterances containing
politeness strategies. To achieve these objectives, a qualitative
descriptive method is employed to gain in-depth insight into the data. Brown
and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory is used to categorize the types of
politeness strategies, while their social variables: Power (P), Distance (D),
and Ranking of imposition (R) is served to contextualize the shifts and their
impact on the level of politeness in translation. Furthermore, Nababan et al.’s
(2012) model is applied to assess the translation quality in terms of accuracy,
acceptability, and readability.
The findings reveal five
types of politeness strategies in the source text: bald on record, positive
politeness, negative politeness, off record, and a combination of positive and
negative politeness. Both George and Mary predominantly use bald on record
strategies. In the translation, shifts frequently occur, for instance, George’s
negative and positive politeness strategies are often translated into bald on
record. Mary’s off record strategies also tend to shift toward more direct
expressions in the target text. Despite these shifts, the majority of
translations are considered accurate and acceptable. These changes, however,
slightly influence how characters are portrayed and how their relationships are
perceived in the Indonesian version.
In conclusion, this study finds that while the politeness strategies utterances are mostly conveyed effectively, the translation process sometimes alters the original communication style and intent. The limitation of this research is that it did not consider audiovisual elements, such as tone, facial expressions, or gestures which are essential components of audiovisual translation and can affect the interpretation of politeness. Despite these limitations, this study contributes to a better understanding of how politeness strategies function across languages and highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity in translation. It is expected to provide useful insights for translation practitioners in handling pragmatic elements such as politeness more carefully.
