Understanding Im/politeness Through Translation: The English-Greek Paradigm

This book offers a unique window to the study of im/politeness by looking at a translation perspective, which offers a different set of data and allows further understanding of the phenomenon. In the arena of real-life translation practice, the workings of im/politeness are renegotiated in a different cultural context and thus pragmatically oriented cross-cultural differences become more concrete and tangible. The book focuses on the language pair English and Greek, a strategic choice with Greek as a less widely spoken language and English as a global language. The two languages also differ in their politeness orientation in certain genres, which allows for a fruitful comparison. The volume focuses on press translation first, then translation of academic texts and translation for the stage, and finally audiovisual translation (mainly subtitles). These genres highlight a public, an interactional, and a multimodal dimension in the workings of im/politeness.