abstract reception environment has considerable effects on accepting a translation. as the expectations of a target culture and its values and needs change throughout history, its criteria for accepting a translation or rejecting it will change accordingly (gentzler, 2001). the expectations of iran, as the reception environment in the present study, have changed after the islamic revolution. in other words, as social, cultural and historical situations of texts in iran have changed, their translations have changed in terms of their contexts accordingly. in this regard, the translations of linguistic politeness as one representation of cultural elements have been analyzed in the translations of three novels:pride & prejudice, sense & sensibilityandrebecca, translated before and after the islamic revolution of iran. to this end, politeness strategies used by the translators in translating dialogues involving female characters classified based on houses (2011) model of politeness were put into the spotlight. the classified examples were then analyzed based on brown & levinsons (1987) theory of politeness. the results indicated that translators have used more politeness strategies in their translations after the islamic revolution of iran.