Gender-linked Choice of Politeness Strategies Applied to Translation of Persian Face-threatening Acts into English

In this article, we will concentrate on translation of Persian face-threatening acts (FTAs) into English. The present paper possesses both social and pragmatic objectives. These objectives are: 1) to identify the politeness strategies (PSs) applied for rendering FTAs in Persian and English languages, 2) compare and contrast the frequencies and kinds of these strategies between two source and target languages (SL and TL) to examine the discrepancies in the presentation of the PSs in two cultures and 3) to focus on the renderings of two gender groups of translators in order to establish a comparison of male and female’s translations of FTAs based on their choice and number of PSs. To gather the data, the following steps were taken: first, twenty FTAs done with different PSs (Brown and Levinson. 1987) were extracted from five Persian movies. The collected data were given to twenty male and female Persian-speaking postgraduate students of translation studies to render them into English. Then, PSs used for translating these FTAs were found in target texts and their types of strategies and frequencies were compared and contrasted with the original. As the final stage, the same comparison and contrast were done in case of the renderings of two gender groups of translators. The findings of the study indicated that from among 14 PSs applied in Persian and English, 12 PSs were commonly used in both SL and TL. Further, analysis of the data showed that although male and female translators applied the same PSs, male translators applied more PSs than females. Finally results revealed that ‘give deference’ was the most frequent PS applied by male translators while female translators used ‘give hint’ more than other PSs.


Introduction 1.1 Statement of the Problem
Translating as an activity and translation as the result of this activity are inseparable from the concept of 'culture'.Culture operates largely through translation of movies, books, etc. thus, facing translators with major problems in their rendering of meaning.Translators are influenced by socio-cultural norms and constraints that affect the way they translate.'Politeness' is one of the very cultural problematic and elusive notions in translation because of the diversity of factors, linguistic and non-linguistic involved in it.In every culture across the universe, considerate participants use principles in conducting conversation including being generous, tactful and modest, etc. to prevent from being 'impolite'.But different social groups may possess different principles or give priority to some norms of politeness more or less than other groups.According to Mahyuni, (2008) every culture and language appears to have a very wide series of linguistic politeness norms.Thus, politeness is a crucial element of interpersonal communication which is valued in all cultures.Understanding different 'politeness strategies' (PSs) in other languages helps the translators to avoid translation errors in transferring politeness aspect of utterances and keep the smooth conversation in target language trough their translations.'Gender' as a social factor is a crucial variable to be taken into account when dealing with PSs.So far, many studies have been conducted regarding the effect of gender of speakers on the choice of PSs.It can be hypothesized that since translation is the product of the language of the human being, it might have the same characteristics as those of language.To the best knowledge of the researchers, little work has been done on the effect of gender of translators on their product of translation.Choice of PSs can be a suitable variable in order to investigate the role of gender of the translators on their renderings.1.2 Language and Gender 'Language' as a communal possession plays a remarkable part in our lives.It is the most important means of communication among people.Through using the 'social' phenomenon of language, knowledge, beliefs, inner thoughts and emotions of interactants are conveyed in their communication that enables them to cooperate.This capacity of language emphasizes its social function.'Society' and language are so closely intertwined that society cannot be said to be 'out there' independent of a language whose task is to reflect it (Chaika, 1989:2).The connection between the utilization of particular languages and the social roles of the males and females of society is one of the major subjects discussed in 'sociolinguistics'.Based on this prolific field of study and socially-based view of language, linguistic structures applied by people are under the influence of their social structures.In the early sociolinguistics literature, 'social class' was the sole concern of sociolinguistics, however, other social variables such as 'age, 'ethnic' and 'regional groups', 'gender', etc. became the focus of the studies of many sociolinguists.Such studies depicted different style of speaking and linguistic forms such as word choices, etc. in conversations of different social groups.'Age-grading' as a phenomenon whereby people with different ages speak differently, supports this view.There are many studies which show that the particular varieties of language that speakers use highly reflect such certain social requirements as their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possibly even their gender.Evidence from dialectology, sociolinguistics, social psychology, anthropology, etc. shows women and men belonging to the same speech community talk differently as they establish relationship with society in distinct ways.In 1970s, women's movement led to the abundance of scholars' researches on the relationship between languages and 'gender' which was characterized by a lot of discussion about the relationship between language and society.Before explaining about the relationship between language and gender and the effect of cultural gender as a determinative factor on speech style, the concept of gender should be explained and distinguished with 'sex'.What sociolinguists discuss is that while we are born with a definite biological sex based on the number of our chromosomes, gender is not something we possess from the very first of our life.As Wardhaugh (2002) put it "Gender is a social construct which involves the whole gamut of genetic, psychological, social, and cultural differences between males and females'.Lots of social scientists have made every effort to demonstrate the difference of two genders in terms of their using languages by developing theories that reflects the differences rather than similarities of speech styles of men and women.According to Stockwell (2002: 16), today the term 'genderlect' is used to refer to the different lexical and grammatical choices which are characteristically made by males and females.Gender difference can be analyzed in terms of their topic, number of interruptions of the partners, turn-taking, amount of talk and purpose of talking, etc.
It can be said that the most outstanding differences between male and female language users are summarized into lexical items.In other words, there are many sex-specific words in any language which are hardly applied by the opposite sex.For example if a reader/listener reads/listens to the Persian items like 'Evā', 'Nāzi', 'che lus', 'xodāmargam bede' can make a firm statement that the speaker/ author is female.Correspondingly, 'chākerim ', 'kaf kardam', 'nokaretam', 'xeili bāhāli', are usually used by males in Persian (Hassani, 2011).From among the works done by scholars, what Lackoff (1975) published as 'language and women's place' created a huge fuss.Based on Lakoff's pioneering work compared to men, women apply some linguistic items more than men.'Hedges' like 'I like', 'you know', 'intensifiers' like 'so much', and 'tag questions' like 'is n't it?' are among these items which women say more than men speakers.Other items which are applied by females more than males are 'exact color terms' like 'sabze lajani' in Persian and 'empty adjectives' like 'Divine', 'charming', 'cute' in English are empty adjectives by which emotional reactions are conveyed.Using 'standard language' is another characteristic seen more in women's language which is associated with prestige and higher social status.As s result, status-consciousness of women leads to using more standard speech forms in their speech.

Translation and Politeness
Although 'politeness' is regarded as a universal phenomenon in all languages and cultures, but i.e.Persian and English have different means of expressing and realizing the same concept of politeness in many aspects.so despite of undeniable existence of common features of politeness among Persian and English languages, by being involved in Persian-English translation or vice versa, translators may encounter with special and culture-bound politeness aspects which can be frequent resource of difficulty and challenge for them.The following conversation between a relatively old man(A) who wants to repair the car of a beautiful lady(B) who are standing in the street has been extracted from the Persian movie 'Blood Orange' (2011): • -A: [Xānoom shomā berid too daftar saro surate Xodetuno beshurin, injā vāynastin man rāhat taram.momkenetool bekeshe.](Madam, please go to the office and wash your hands and face, if you do so, I am more comfortable, besides it(repairing the car) may take a long time).
-B: [Eibi dāre?](Is there any problem?) -A: [che eibi?shomā ham mese doxtare mā mimunin.](Not at all!I consider you as my daughter) In this conversation, A is trying to suggest the girl politely to not stand in the street (as it is not good for his face to stand with a young girl in public) while B finds this word as impolite, but again A tries to eliminate this misunderstanding by implying that 'I am very old and I did not think in a bad way you assumed'.Persian audience of this extract may fully understand that in both times, the man tried to be polite in expressing his message in an indirect way.But this question is raised in mind:" Are audience from other cultures interpret A's conversation as polite one?" or "what B says in response to A is understandable by them?".

Politeness Theory
In this study, the most comprehensive and detailed study to politeness conducted by Brown and Levinson (1987) is focused which is regarded as an effort to explore the use of language.This study owes a great deal to Goffman's theory (1955) and central notion of 'face' in this theory was followed in Brown and Levinson's work.What they conceptualized as 'face' in their lengthy analysis of politeness is 'the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself'.They differentiated between two 'positive' and 'negative' faces.Negative face has been defined as 'the basic claim of freedom of action and freedom from imposition' in contrast to the positive face which is 'consistent self-image or 'personality' claimed by interactants, crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of' (Brown and Levinson , 1987:62).
Brown and Levinson introduced another concept namely 'face-threatening acts (FTAs)' which are posed to redress the affronts to both negative and/or positive faces of speaker and/or hearer in verbal exchanges.Some of these FTAs which are inseparable part of everyday communication are 'orders', 'requests', 'suggestions', 'warnings', 'compliments', 'offers', 'promises', 'expressing thanks', 'accepting a thank you or apology', 'acceptance of offers', 'disagreements', 'apologies', 'acceptance of a compliments', etc.
Here are two FTAs extracted from the Persian movie 'Santouri' ( 2007) with the corresponding subtitles: • Apology: [Shomā bebaxshid, dige az bade ruzegāre..] (This is part of the misfortunes of times, you have to forgive).• Request: [Ali jān shābāsh mixād] (Ali, he needs to be tipped) Brown and Levinson postulated that such acts are potentially FTAs they inherently damage the face of the hearer (H) or the speaker (S) by acting in opposition to the wants and desires of the other.As Brown and Levinson argue, in attempt of saving faces, FTAs threats will be mitigated by use of redressive actions in the form of politeness strategies (PSs) (1987: 24).They outline five main strategies that a given sppeaker can employ to avoid or minimize the effects from carrying out FTAs.These strategies are 1) bald on-record, 2) positive politeness, 3) negative politeness, and 4) off-record strategies.The more an act threatens S's or H's face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy (ibid: 60).
Here is an example Persian FTA (complaint) extracted from Persian movie 'Mum's guest ' (2004).In both ST and TT, the FTA has been done by 'rhetorical question', one sub-strategy of 'off-record politeness': • [Mage behet nagoftam qando chāy kam dārim?] (How many times I should tell you that we do not have any tea and sugar?)Based on researchers' interest, politeness has been investigated from different points of view.The basic premise adopted in this study is that politeness as a socio-cultural behavior has to do with gender as a determinative social factor.So as Eelen believes (2001) Politeness is also a phenomenon which relates language and the social world which warrants its classification within sociolinguistics.

Gender and Politeness
By being Polite, men and women mean concerning for the feelings of others, but there is certainly plenty of evidence of differences between women and men in this area of language and their ways of being polite often contrast markedly.The difference of speech between men and women can be investigated from two points of view.As Holmes (1995:221) states, because of unequal distribution of 'power' in society the politeness norms and the patterns of interaction appear to be benefit men more than women.This is what exactly 'dominance theory' (or power-based theory) postulates.So based on this theory, society assigns different roles to men and women and correspondingly gives unequal and distinct cultural value to them based on their gender.In other words, men possess social 'dominance' and women are regarded as 'subordinate' group in speech community.Consequently, relatively powerless women try to be appeared more polite and not interrupt men while speaking and use more prestigious forms of language in protecting themselves in dealing with more social dominant group, etc.As Xuemei (2007) argues it is not surprising that women are more polite than men as the women are regarded as a subordinate or less powerful group than men in many communities.Therefore politeness devices like FTAs are applied more frequently by female speakers than males.Fasold(1990:104) argues women use weaker and more self-effacing forms of language.It is believed by many sociolinguists that compliments (both giving and receiving), apologize, expressing thanks and few other FTAs are done more by women rather than men.It is also reported that females apply hedges (as one of the sub-strategies of negative politeness) to prevent such talk from being FTA.
The second approach to the way men and women talk differently is 'difference theory' (or two-culture theory) which emphasizes on the separate cultural worlds of men and women which lead them to promote different ways of speaking (Uchida, 1992).As a result, in societies in which different socialization of men and women is present, differentiation of interaction strategies like politeness used by men and women are more obvious in a way that boys are expected to speak like a boy and girls to do like a girl.

Significance of the Study
Politeness as the prevalent cultural concept in human interaction (Yu, 2003) and the most important symbolic values to be socialized in our daily life (Mahyuni, 2008) can be a starting point for research in the field of translation studies which compared to the linguistics has received less attention.The present study will be of significance when it comes to realization of PSs applied for doing FTAs in Persian movie texts and their corresponding renderings done by translators.The finding of this study may hopefully reveal the differences and similarities of SL and TL in terms of type and the number of PSs applied.'Gender' is a crucial factor to be taken into account when dealing with politeness strategies.Contrastively, this study will shed light on the areas of difference between male and female translators with regard to their choice of PSs in translations.

Method
"Movie is so important that it has become the first art of human world" pointed out by Baker (2004: 40).In this study, texts of five Persian movies were applied as the material of the research.These movies were: Blood Orange (2011), Mum's Guest (2004), A Walk in the Fog (2010), Loser (2004), and Personal Life (2011).The main reason for selecting movies as the corpus of the study was to meet the requirement of having conversational texts whose FTAs could be investigated in detail.The second materials of this were seven FTAs proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987).These FTAs were: 'offer', 'request', 'complaint', 'advice', 'suggestion', 'disagreement', 'reminding'.Totally twenty original utterances were extracted from these movies which were done by different PSs.These utterances were given to twenty translators to render them into English.In order to avoid the self-consciousness of the translators about the intention of the researchers and to overcome 'observer paradox', No hint was given to translators about the way of translating.Super and Sub-strategies of politeness applied in English translation of Persian FTAs done by the students and their frequency and percentages of occurrence are identified and were listed in one table and contrasted in two charts.As the final stage, the same comparison and contrast were done in renderings of FTAs done by male and female translators.
Ten male and Ten female (totally twenty) MA students of English translation in Sheikh Bahaee University of Iran and PhD students of translation studies in Universiti Sains Malaysia were the research participants.The basis of this selection was the participant's availability and their good English proficiency.
The researchers aimed to give the data in an audiovisual questionnaire.But due to the difficulties in uploading (by the researchers) and downloading (by the participants), the translators received the data on a paper questionnaire, in which the setting and the features (age, sex,, etc.) of the characters in the movie was explained to some extent.

Persian Vs. English Analysis
As mentioned before, in this research twenty Persian utterances were given to twenty Persian-speaking postgraduate students of translation studies to render them into English.In other words, 400 English translations of FTAs were collected.In this part of the analysis we analyze the politeness strategies in ST and TT.In table 3.1.1,for every type of FTAs, only one Persian utterance has been set as a representative of all and one corresponding English translation by translators has been given.Types of super and sub-strategies applied in both languages are identified based on politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987):  [Hajaqa, is it fair that you gain political power by using public properties?][Sir, note that when a person is the representative of a brand, the least service that he can provide is to follow the international price of the product] • Negative politeness (give deference): [Sir] • Off-record politeness (displace the Listener): [vaqti ādam namayandegie 1 brando dare kamtarin servisesh in eke be qeimate beinolmelalie mahsul pāyband bāshe] Analysis of the whole 400 English translations of FTAs showed there were some discrepancies in terms of the type and the percentage of the PSs applied in Persian and English.The following table depicts this difference: As shown in the table, 12 types of politeness sub-strategies were used commonly both in Persian and English.These sub-strategies were included in four super strategies of bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record politeness.Totally 55 politeness sub-strategies have been applied in the twenty Persian utterances.From among these strategies, 'give deference' has the highest percentage (30%) in Persian, while in English translations done by the students, 'give hint' is the highest in percentage (17%).For better comparison, the chart below has been given to illustrate the percentage of the occurrence of PSs in both ST and TT: In this example and other similar cases, translators refused to apply the same strategy and preferred to express the message in the most direct way.One reason can be their unawareness of the researcher's intention (examining the degree of politeness) in investigation of their rendering.As mentioned before, because of avoiding 'observer's paradox', the researchers refused to tell the translators that politeness aspect of their translation would be investigated.So the translators did not pay attention to the indirectness of the utterances and tried to transfer the message in the shortest and more informative way.The other reason behind the increase of this strategy can be proficiency of the participants.Since stating an indirect and polite utterance in a foreign or second language is more difficult for every language user than saying it in a direct way, so it can be hypothesized that proficiency of the translators was not affectless in this regard.
On the other hand, sub-strategies of 'include both S and H in the activity', 'use in-group identity markers', 'give deference', 'hedge', 'give hints' and 'use rhetorical question' has been decreased.Sub-strategy of offer was present in ST which in TT, has been omitted.
There are many languages across the world which possess T/V system in which there is one singular you (Tu) and plural you (Vous).Similar to Latin, French, German, etc.In Persian 'To' is used for singular you and 'shomā' is used for plural you.This system is used as a sign of politeness in Persian as well.
Here is an example of lack of T/V system in English translation of a Persian FTA: As is shown in the previous table, all the PSs were commonly used by male and female translators.However, the frequencies of the usage of these strategies were not equal.Totally male translators applied more strategies (615) compared to female translators (508).The following chart compares and contrasts the frequency of occurrence of these strategies between these two gender groups: As these charts show, there is not any distinctive difference in usage of super PSs between the translations done by male and female translators.

Conclusion
The present study was an effort to contribute to the literature on realization of PSs proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) by investigating the Persian FTAs and their English translations and also to examine the role of the translators' gender on choice of politeness strategies in their translations.
The first clear conclusion from the data of the present study is that FTAs are done with different politeness strategies in Persian and English.The percentage of the usage of these strategies varies between these two languages as well.However, we should bear this matter in mind that translation is constrained by the lexical items applied in ST.In other words, for rendering politeness aspect into TT, the translators are limited by politeness strategies applied in SL to some extent.So giving overall generalization about politeness in two languages and cultures is not recommended by translation investigations.
The second conclusion is that 'gender' and 'choice of PSs' are not independent variables.As it was shown in this study, although two groups of male and female translators applied the same PSs, they did not use them equally.I would not, at this point to reject what scholars proposed about the difference of politeness between men and women.But what was concluded from the analysis of the data does not support this idea that 'women are more polite than men' as the number of politeness strategies used by male translators was higher than females'.However, one certainly cannot say that the male translators are more polite that female translators solely due to the number and types of PSs they used in their translation.Rather, there are many other methods by which the degree of politeness can be investigated.
The other limitation of this study was due to the characters of the movies.Researchers noticed that in many cases of translations, 'gender' of the character of the movie, had influence of the way of the renderings of the translators.As a result, investigating the language male and female translators used in their translations was not an easy task.These data make it clear that the search for the effect of the role of translators on their renderings should be continued on other texts in which such variables do not have influence on the results.

Table 3 .
1.1.Analysis of PSs in Translation of FTAs in Persian (ST) and English (TT)