(im)Politeness and Honorification, in Japanese Translation

Abstract: In this thesis the translation of (im)politeness and honorification from Japanese is examined. Due to the different and complex politeness system in Japanese compared to European languages, difficulties rise in translating texts containing it. The goal of this thesis is to analyze the strategies used and the outcome, while comparing the translations of the novel Norwegian Wood made to three different languages: English, Swedish and Spanish. The comparison shows that the English and Swedish translations took big freedom in embellishing (at times to an excessive amount) the target text in order to show the politeness used in the source text. The Spanish translation on the other hand took a more passive approach in this regard.