This research investigates politeness strategies in directive speech acts uttered by the main characters in the cartoon entitled The Amazing World of Gumball from season 2. The objectives of this research are to classify the types of politeness strategies used by Gumball and Darwin, to examine the translation techniques applied to their utterances, to analyze the shifts that occur in the translation of politeness strategies, and to evaluate the quality of the translation in terms of accuracy and acceptability. It employs a descriptive qualitative method, with the data accessed through Netflix. The sources of data are the subtitles of the cartoon, used as documents, and the informants who served as raters for the translation quality assessment.
This research is a qualitative study employing a descriptive method. The data consist of dialogues containing politeness strategies in directive speech acts, taken from the cartoon The Amazing World of Gumball Season 2, which was accessed through Netflix. The sources of data in this research are the dialogues from the cartoon as documents and the informants who served as raters for the translation quality assessment.
The research is grounded in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, Searle’s (1979) directives, Molina and Albir’s (2002) translation techniques, and Nababan et al.’s (2012) model of translation quality assessment.
The findings reveal three types of politeness strategies, bald on record (46.23%), positive politeness (30.19%), and negative politeness (23.58%), with no instances of off-record strategies. The analysis also shows that established equivalent was the most frequently used translation technique (68.29%). Thirteen shifts in politeness strategies were identified due to translation techniques, with reduction being the most influential. Despite these shifts, the overall translation quality remained accurate and acceptable, aligning with the cartoon’s humorous and friendly tone.
Future research may expand this study by analyzing other cartoon series, or to explore broader patterns, including the use of off-record strategies. These findings are expected to contribute to translation and pragmatics education by encouraging students to consider the functions and contexts of speech acts in translation.
