Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2020

Impoliteness scholars have drawn attention to the fact that any deviation from the stereotypical ‘polite’ and ‘feminine’ behaviour, in certain communities of practice, is considered impolite and offensive (Mills 2005). The aim of the study is to investigate how im/politeness constructs gender identities in two Greek stage translations (1977, 2006) of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), through analysis of how the translators reshape the im/polite behaviour in the interaction of the main couple to capture the audience’s attention. An emic approach to the analysis of the two translations, along with a glimpse into multimodal aspects of interaction, namely, the body language as manifested in the film adaptation of the play (1966), indicate subversion of gender roles and different levels of aggression in the two Greek versions, highlighting the significance of the chronological distance between the two translations. The study reveals that impoliteness theories can be applicable to stage translation, that body language may be another factor contributing to the shaping of im/politeness, while there is a growing awareness that relationships and gender roles, in the sphere of the spectacle, continuously embrace aggression for entertainment purposes.

This study intends (a) to heighten awareness of how impoliteness scholarship may enlighten translation research and practice, and (b) to broaden the scope of research in impoliteness studies by considering stage translation data. It examines Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie ([1944] 2018) and two of its Greek translated versions (by Nikos Spanias, 1946/1987, Γυάλινος Κόσμος [Glass World] and by Errikos Belies, 2001/2014, Ο Γυάλινος Κόσμος [The Glass World]). It attempts an intra-cultural comparison of the two translations to examine how translators rendered impoliteness in family interaction, taking into account their chronological gap. The study takes an emic perspective to the data, designs a questionnaire eliciting respondents’ evaluation of impolite options and uses Garcia-Pastor’s (2008) model of face-aggravating strategies to account for the findings. Findings show that the second translation conveys the conflict between the main characters in more concrete terms, exploiting more face-aggravating strategies in relation to the first translation. The study also shows that the respondents seem to favour more impolite renderings by considering the characters’ intimate relationships, confirming the connection between intimacy and impoliteness. The significance of the research lies in the fact that it broadens the scope of (im)politeness theory and studies to include another field that could provide data for the research of such instances of interaction, namely translation studies and in that it shows the validity of pragmatics in enlightening translation practice.

Im/politeness scholars have highlighted the significance of ideology in the use of im/politeness phenomena, as the very notion of im/politeness presupposes a mental filtering of discourse through preconceptions that already exist in the mind (Terkourafi 1999, 2001, 2005; Mills 2003; Culpeper 2011; Kádár and Haugh 2013). The study aims at demonstrating how im/politeness can be manifested in two Greek versions of a dramatic dialogue that has its roots in the ancient theatre, where masks may be thought to undertake functions of face/identity formation in (im)politeness theory. The focus is on Eugene O’Neil’s dramatic trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and on two Greek stage translations of the play that are twenty-one years apart (1986 and 2007). The study adopts both a second/ first order (Grainger 2011, or etic/emic) approach to the data, to gain further insight into how im/politeness plays out in the target versions and also considers in/appropriateness of social behaviour (Locher and Watts 2008) to further understanding of aspects of the relational work enacted by the protagonist. The analysis accentuates the significance of the narrative or the point of view of the target versions of the play. Findings highlight the use of different im/politeness strategies in the translated interaction between the siblings, Orin and Lavinia, which affect respondents’ appropriateness judgements. Respondents appreciated a higher tension between intimacy and aggression as manifested in one of the two translations. The study underscores the value of translation data in im/politeness research by drawing attention to intra-cultural variation with regards to the use of im/politeness manifesting a different narrative/point of view (e.g. non/religious, non/allusive to the ancient theatre). Conversely, im/politeness research contributes to translation practice by showing that im/politeness options may exert influence on audience response.

The study draws on scholars (Leech and Short 1981; Wales 1994; Fowler 1996; Ball 1997; Semino 2002; Leech and McIntyre 2006) who focused on the ‘point of view’ in dramatic texts as a concept which permits an authoritative voice to enter the narrative and arise in discourse. It intends to examine how im/politeness contributes to renegotiating some special themes in fiction like, for instance, how the human-animal relationship is to be portrayed in two Greek translations (1995, 2015) of Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story (1958). The claim is that translators’ ideological positioning regulates pragmatic aspects of meaning-making like the use of aggression and intimacy in reshaping the identity of characters and entities in the translated versions. Τhe study traces how the two translators attributed aggression to humans/animals in the universe of The Zoo Story by taking into account lay people’s evaluation of the two translations. Results show that TTa (by Kaiti Chistodoulou 1995) uses im/politeness strategies which indicate lower esteem for animals and higher esteem for humans. By contrast, TTb (by Errikos Belies) shapes a different identity of the human-animal relationship: it indicates higher esteem for animals, doing justice to the zoo imagery. The findings suggest that the narratives that permeate discourse crucially affect the use of im/politeness of the fictional interactants and that im/politeness is a powerful tool in the hands of translators. Im/politeness research may also benefit from translational data in that they can provide multiple contexts in which im/politeness can be studied in interaction cross-culturally.

Im/politeness has attracted considerable attention over the past decades (starting with Lakoff 1973; Brown and Levinson 1978; Leech 1983) and has kept expanding rapidly with the discursive turn (Eelen 2001; Mills 2003; Watts 2003; Bousfield 2008; Locher 2008). There is a growing interest in examining im/politeness from a number of perspectives, e.g. society, gender, cross-cultural etc., and multiple definitions have been proposed, however, impoliteness as such has not had a distinct theoretical framework yet.

This study investigates impoliteness through drama translation data. It focuses on manipulation of im/politeness in target versions of a playtext, in terms of gender, and examines how humour may be facilitated through such shifts. The aim is to confirm that impoliteness does interact with gender (Mills 2003), and that humour creation draws on reversed gender stereotypes. It also shows that power (ensuing from reversed gender stereotypes) interacts with impoliteness strategies, to manifest humour in the target versions. The study uses Bousfield’s (2008) model to account for im/politeness shifts, between the two versions.

Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) is a comedy and a satire targeting the aristocratic society of the time. The two Greek translations of the play (2006 by Karhadakis and 2010 by Belies) are a most suitable context for examining how impoliteness interacts with power distance and gender to create humour, because of its humorous aspects and cross-gender talk. The paper also intends to show impoliteness scholarship that translation has a rich potential for deciphering or confirming pragmatic aspects of the phenomenon, which are elsewhere pursued through monolingual research.

The use of im/politeness in political discourse has attracted relatively little attention in im/politeness scholarship (Tracy 2017). The study examines how the character of a leader may be intra-/cross-culturally reshaped, in translated drama, through the use of im/politeness strategies. To this end, the study examines the use of im/politeness strategies in two Greek versions (Belies 1997; Karthaios 2004) of William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. Etic and emic approaches to the data show differences in the way the character of Brutus is portrayed, by the translators’ manipulating im/politeness strategies in his discourse. The study uses the ‘horizontal’ dimension of intimacy/distance and the ‘vertical’ dimension of power (Spencer-Oatey 1996) to show that the first translation (Karthaios 2004) shows Brutus to be making use of a less impressive persuasive strategy when addressing the public, the second translation (Belies 1997) seems to show Brutus’ potential to express intimacy towards the public, which made the persuasive force of his discourse more convincing. The study shows that im/politeness is a significant tool in the hands of translators who shape the identity of the leader and that translated versions of a playtext can fruitfully show preferred patterns of behaviour which may be pointing to cultural patterns of interaction.