抄録
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.
https://ror.org/03599d813 
