Translation analysis of Afghan female character through politeness strategy: a sociopragmatic study of Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyze how the main character, Mariam, in A Thousand Splendid Suns was characterized through the politeness strategy in English, and how its characterization is translated into the Indonesian Language. This study is a single holistic case study design, and the researcher collected and analyzed dialogues representing the politeness strategies of Mariam through document analysis and validated through Focused Group Discussion (FGD) in which one expert from linguistics and two experts from translation attended. The result of the research indicates that Mariam’s politeness strategies are shifted from the source text into the target text. Such shifts in the politeness strategies of Mariam resulted from the translation techniques of explicitation, modulation, and paraphrase which in turn minimized the frankness of Mariam and showed her more friendly and polite in the target text. Meanwhile, the researcher hopes that this research will be beneficial for the translators in terms of understanding the linguistic units representing politeness strategies, translation techniques that cause shift of politeness strategies, characterization, and ultimately add to the general understanding of our knowledge regarding characterization and politeness strategies in the context of literary translation.

Keywords

• Translation
• politeness strategies
• translation technique
• translation shift
• translation quality
• characterization