on translation of phatic communion and socio-cultural relationships between the characters of the novels

phatic communion is a cultural concept which differs across cultures. according to hofstede (2001), the u.s. tends to have individualistic culture; however, asian countries tend to have collectivistic cultures. these cultures view phatic communion differently. in individualistic cultures like u.s., phatic communion reflects speakers’ socio-cultural relationships in conversations. to see whether or not phatic communion serves the same function in collectivistic cultures like ours, the current study aims to focus on the likely changes that the ignorance of the cultural differences in translating phatic communion may cause in socio-cultural relationship (power relationship) of characters in fictional dialogues in translated novels. to this end, three novels, namely alice’s adventures in wonderland by lewis carroll, the third policeman by flann o’brien and burmese days by george orwell and their translations were selected. first, they were read carefully, and then their literary criticisms were studied to analyze characters in terms of their social status and power relationship. next, phatic utterances were extracted from the texts and were classified into three types of phatic communion according to laver’s framework (self-oriented, other-oriented & neutral). at last, each phatic token was compared with its translation to see whether or not their translation has changed the socio-cultural relationship between characters in the novels in question. the findings of the study revealed that 27 percent of translated phatic utterances have changed the character’s power relationships.