Although `politeness` theory originally concerns relationship in dialogues, it has been applied to relationship between author(translator) and readers in translation studies. This study defines politeness in translation as a tool enhancing readers` understanding by diminishing cognitive burden. To find out politeness-related strategies, a Russian text(`The Man in a Case` by Chekhov) and two of its translation into Korean(published in 1970 and 1989) were compared and analyzed. Strategies are divided into two groups: one for mediating cultural differences(mediation strategies), the other for textual effects of target texts(textual effect strategies). In mediation strategies were included 1) strategy to deal with Russian name usage(surname, patronymic, petname, family name) 2) strategy to reflect characters` hierarchy(according to age) following Korean tradition. As textual effect strategies sentence-ending suffix, IN contrast, familiarity-evoking expressions, domesticated expressions were found.