An-Najah Staff

This studyaims to investigate the conceptualization of politeness and the notion of face in English and Arabic audio-visual advertising through a comparative and pragmatic study of the politeness strategies used in both languages. It also explores the influence of orientation to politeness and conceptualization of face on the translation of cosmetic audio-visual advertisementsfrom English to Arabic. The theme of politeness is present in every aspect of human relationships. In advertising this is no exception. Therefore, 44audio-visual advertisements,22English advertisementswith their 22 Arabic translations, are used for data collection. The researcher employed an empirical, descriptive and analytical approach where advertisements were selected, categorized according to politeness strategies, calculated for frequency and explained according to culture, language and translation. The findings of this studystressed the preference of English advertising to negative politeness, as more individualistic and low-context culture. In contrast, Arabic translated advertisements showed more inclination to positive politenessas more collectivistic and high-context culture. The findings of this study as to what politeness strategies are favored in both languages could be used in translation through domestication of English advertisements into Arabic. The aim is to create a similar impact on the target language audience to efficiently promote the advertised products for optimal benefits. Translators utilized domestication through shift between politeness orientations as a translation strategy to create a similar impact on the target language audience similar to that on the source language audience. To achieve that, they used a number of techniques, such as dubbing, voice over, translation by addition and sometimes omission.

See the full file here