Politeness in Japanese Subtitles of English Movies

Abstract

Translated movie subtitles must be concise while retaining the original meaning, because they vanish as soon as soon as lines are delivered by the actors. Because of that time limitation, expressions that are not directly related to the propositional meaning of the original, such as politeness, may be changed in the subtitles. This paper explores, based on the framework of Brown and Levinson (1987), 1) whether or not the politeness expressions in the original are retained as they are in the subtitles and 2) if changes are made, how they are changed, by examining Japanese subtitles of two English movies. We argue that politeness expressions in the original lines in English reflect the impositions of individual utterances, but that those in the Japanese subtitles tend to reflect interpersonal distance or power relations between the speaker and the addressee. We also briefly discuss the role of ellipsis in the Japanese subtitles.