Politeness Goes to the Scaffold. Forms of Address in Polish and Italian Translations of Tudor Films and Television Series

While the topic of politeness forms is certainly not new to Translation and AVT Studies (e.g. Hatim & Mason 2000; Bruti 2007, 2013; Bruti & Perego 2008; Gartzonika & Serban 2009; Mariottini 2012, Szarkowska 2013), in this chapter we investigate the translation of addressative forms in a particular framework of historical films. In this genre, forms of address do not only reflect social and emotional relationships between the characters, but also have an additional function of conveying the aura of diachronic estrangement and play a crucial role in historical stylisation of the dialogue. In this case, the main challenges in translation seem not to stem from mode-specific constraints or systemic differences between source and target languages, but rather non-equivalence of social relationships in a definite historical and cultural context. As a starting point of the analysis the chapter takes Anglophone television and cinema productions set in Tudor times, Britain’s favourite setting for historical drama. Filmic portrayals of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I involve recurrent patterns of verbal address, which are clearly recognisable to the British audience, while at the same time marking historical distance. However, the fact that hierarchical organisation of Tudor society differed from Polish and Italian social orders present the translators with a difficult task of not only finding plausible forms of address and reference, but also making them understandable to the audience less familiar with the intricacies of 16th century English reality. The chapter examines how Polish and Italian translators deal with this challenge, trying to see whether their strategies tend to be similar or different.