TRANSLATING FOR
TOURISM
Translation assessment
and tourist texts
How do we know when a translation is good?
According to House (1997; 1998; 2001) there are three main
approaches to translation evaluation:
1) Mentalist approach: presupposing the view of meaning
inside the reader’s head
2) Response-based approach: the most relevant aspects are
the readers reaction to the translated text and/or the
respect of the function of the source text
3) Text and discourse-based approaches (cit. in Cappelli, 2008: 3)
House’s model adopts the concept of equivalence and
presupposes the analysis and and comparison of the original
text and its translation on three different levels:
1) Language/text
2) Register
3) Genre
The Translated Text (TT) must have the same function of the
Source Text (ST) and it requires a ‘cultural filter’(House 2001, cited in
Cappelli, 2008: 3)
Translating tourist texts
This implies conveying meaning across different languages and
cultures and creating an equivalent source text effect, which
is successful in terms of advertising in the target audience.
This can become difficult, considering the cultural filters from
ST to TT.
Four-Step methodology of translation
• STEP 1: identification of functionality of meaning in a given
language (L1) through the analysis of node words
• STEP 2:Analysis of L2 prima-facie translation of L1 node
words
• STEP 3: Analysing the linguistic behaviour of L2 translation
equivalents to L1 node word collocates
• STEP 4: Interpretation of cultural studies (Manca, 2012: 55)
ICEBERG THEORY (Hall, [1954] 1990, quoted in Manca, 2012: 55)
STEP 4
Communication
depends on the context in which it takes place
High Context Culture (HCC) Low Context Culture (LCC)
• Context (implicitness) • Text (explicitness)
• Communication (feelings, opinions) • Information (facts)
• High Information Load • Low information loads
• KILC (keep it long and complete) • KISS (keep it short and simple)
• Reader friendly (peer/peer)
• Writer oriented (expert/non-expert)
• Instrumental
• Expressive
• Linear
• Circular • Informal
• Formal • Direct
• Indirect
Example 1:
English and Italian in tourist texts
Translating the English and the Italian languages of
tourism (Manca 2012)
CORPORA USED RUNNING WORDS TEXT TYPES TIME SPAN
Agriturismi Corpus (IAC) 600.000 Italian websites of From 2001 to 2006
farmhouse holidays
Farmhouse Holidays 700.000 British websites of From 2001 to 2006
Corpus (BFC) farmhouse holidays
ANALYSIS OF THE MOST FREQUENT WORD IN THE
corpus (four-step methodology approach)
View/s
Step 1: the plural form is more frequent (occurring 389 times) and its collocational
profile is characterized by a series of adjectives such as panoramic, spectacular,
wonderful, stunning and collocates with verbs enjoy, have and command.
Step 2: prima-facie translation equivalent of the word view in vista (occurring 156
times in IAC).
Step 3: identification of three more linguistic equivalents of views: panorama,
scenario, paesaggio.
Scenario collocates with the immerso and some its synonyms
such as incastonato and inserito.
a) Immerso nel verde…
b) Immerso nella natura
c) Immerso nella campagna
d) Immerso tra gli ulivi
e) Immerso nei boschi
Typically Italian is used metaphorically. The idea of immersion is linked to the concept of water and
purification.
Italian farmhouse owners focus more on emotions and feelings.
Step 4:
Paesaggio and Scenario could be considered cultural
equivalents of the English views.
Immerso in un paesaggio spettacolare tra mari e monti, l’agriturismo…
(HCC description)
Would literally read:
Immersed in a spectacular view between seas and mountains, the farmhouse…
British culture, which tends towards a LCC communication,
would prefer facts rather than feelings (Manca, 2012: 60).
• The farmhouse has stunning views of sea and mountains
• The farmhouse is set in a commanding position over the sea and the surrounding mountains
Example 2:
The language of guidebooks
Vocabulary of guidebooks
Could it be seen as an example of ‘functionally specialized’
language
used in interactions between specialists (expert writers) and
non-specialists (non-expert-readers)? (Cappelli, 2012: 20)
Tourist texts have the leading function to develop and lead the ‘tourist
gaze’ (Urry, 2002 quoted in Cappelli, 2012: 21) by guiding ‘tourist
glances’ (Urry, 2001 quoted in Cappelli, 2012: 21)
The intended goal of this type of discourse is to guide and shape the
tourist gaze while ‘firing imagination’.
Case study: the data
The study is carried out on data gathered from two small corpora of English and
Italian guidebooks and comprises parallel texts from ‘Florence’ and ‘Central
Tuscany’, originally written in English and their translations. It also includes
comparable data from Michelin guidebooks, written for two independent
markets.
Spatial representation in English guidebooks
• Be+ preposition category (1348 tokens)
Verbs of general localization followed by prepositions:
1) ‘Existential placing’: e.g. to be located, to be situated…
2) ‘Spatial placing’: e.g. to stand, to lie, to contain…
3) ‘General inclusion’: e.g. to comprise, to surround to contain… or ‘relational inclusion’:
e.g. to join, to link…
4) ‘Later localization’ (with respect to an object): e.g. to be lined, to adjoin, to parallel…
5) ‘Distribution of objects on the surface’: e.g.to cover, to dot, to riddle..
6) ‘ Dynamicity’- involve active participation of objects- e.g. to squeeze, to give
way…
Go + preposition category (316 tokens)
These verbs included in this category are verbs that lexicalise
motion:
• On a surface/through a surface or an enclosed space: e.g. to
sweep, to spread, to traverse..
• On a circular curved path: e.g. to encircle, to curve, to wind…
• On a path by specifying its point of origin or end: e.g. to start, to
end, to reach
• On a horizontal or vertical path: e.g. to branch, to flow, to run….
(Cappelli, 2012: 23—25)
63% of the occurrences are cases of ‘fictive motion’
• There are no elements that physically change place or
actually move, but they are described as moving or ‘doing’
something.
• They create the perception of motion.
A feature of English, of the guidebook genre or
of a discourse type?
• Research in linguistic expressions of spatial information
shows typological differences across languages.
• Speakers of different languages focus on different things:
e.g. English speakers tend to favour dynamic aspects
Typological distinction of languages (Talmy, 1983 quoted in Cappelli
2012:26)
Satellite-framed languages Verb-framed languages
They are languages that tend to They conflate information
conflate in the verb information
about motion and manner of about motion and paths
motion and resort to whereas manner is
prepositional phrases to add
information about the path. expressed through
adverbials.
English:
Example—
I saw the car go out of the tunnel, down a steep hill and
into a new runnel Italian
Studies on the translation of motion events from English to
another verb-framed language have reported international
differences in translation with a loss in the number of manner
of motion verbs and frequent simplification of complex paths.
[…] the old fortress lies alongside the Aldobrandeschi tower […]
[…]il palazzo[…] si erge accanto alla torre degli Aldobrandeschi.
Example 3:
translating tourist web texts
Web content: new genre or a medium for the ‘old’
genres?
If we consider genre ‘socially ratified text-types in a community, then we can consider web pages as
a macro-genre’ (Kress and Threadgold 1988 quoted in Cappelli, 2008: 4)
BLOGS
DISCUSSION
WEB
FORUMS
PAGE PORTALS
COMPANY
WEBSITES
RECOGNIZABLE FEATURES:
– TITLE BAR
– NAVIGATION
– MAIN CONTENT
– AREA
– ETC.
Linearity of texts in its literal sense dissolves and it replaced
with a ‘subjective linearity’ (Cappelli, 2008:5):
• Entry
• Exit
• Links
• Hyperlinks
Web textuality
• Adjustable for the readers (language preference)
• Collective product (users can modify the content)
• Dynamic
• Interactive
Technology aspects
• Key words
• Key sentences
• Full sentences
• Short texts
‘Web pages become a sort of container where the reader picks
what s/he needs’ (Cappelli, 2008:5)
The language of web promotion in tourist websites
Promotional English:
• Emphatic language (language of euphoria)
• Abundant use of adjectives
• Imperative mood
• Direct address to the reader (ego-targeting)
• Description of attractions using sociolinguistic perspectives
(authenticity, stranger-hood)
Analysing tourism websites..
• Is there such a thing as the language of tourism?
• Is there only one type of language of tourism?
• Can tourism English be considered specialized discourse
such as medical English or computer English?
About the source text…
• Was it meant to be translated?
• Just one author or many authors?
• Who are the receivers?
KEYWORDS
They are meant to fire the imagination while mirroring the consumer which is why they need to be
part of the customer’s language:
• Short
• Clear
• Current
• At the beginning of texts (users tend to scan texts--- the most important information goes at the
top)
• Blending (e.g. campsite vs camping site)
• Acronyms
• Abbreviations
• Reductions
A case study: promoting Siena’s surroundings
• For the present study two small corpora were collected: an Italian- English
parallel corpus and a comparable English corpus.
• The corpora contain informational-promotional websites promoting SIENA and
surroundings originally created in Italian (SIENA_PAR_IT) and then translated
into English (SIENA_PAR_EN). There is also a corpus created in English for an
English speaking audience (SIENA_EN).
(Cappelli, 2008:14)
Keyword analysis
From the corpora keywords were identified.
WordSmith Keywords Tool:
• It identifies 500 keywords for each corpus, that is, «all those
words whose frequency is unusually high in comparison
with some norm» (Scott, 1998: 71 quoted in Cappelli,
2008:14)
From the original 500 keywords, some elements were taken out such as ‘tel’ , ‘www’… and successively the
two lists were compared according to keyness and frequency.
SIEN_PAR_EN SIENA_EN
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
We can classify the 500 keywords in 8 thematic groups:
1)History: e.g. medieval, Etruscan
2) Buildings and infrastuctures: e.g. palazzo, duomo, tower…
3) Siena: e.g. Campo, Banchi, sienese,palio…
4) Territory: e.g. natural, wooden…
5) Food and drink: e.g. doc, red, wine…
6) Activities: e.g. thermal, walk…
7) Art: gothic, frescoed—
8) Services : e.g. restaurant, enoteca, villa…
DIFFERENCE IN KEYWORDS
• Certain keywords are present in one list but not in the other.
• The second most frequent keyword in SIENA_PAR_EN,
production, is not listed in SIENA_EN, nor is tradition.
• SIENA_PAR_EN corpus there are no Siena, or Tuscany or
cypress as keywords.
Difference in distribution
• Certain keywords are very frequent in one corpus and less
frequent in another
• E.g. museum occurs 182 times in SIENA_PAR_EN, but only
52 times in SIENA_EN
Tourist Translation
as a matter of language choice
TRANSLATIONS (Stewart, 2012: 7)
PEDAGOGICAL PROFESSIONAL VOCATIONAL
TRANSLATION TRANSLATION TRANSLATION
• ‘academic translation’ or • Financial reward • Translation in a
‘school translation’ • It considers target pedagogical sector with
• Language learning activity readership, the identity an eye to factors that are
• Target Reader: and requirement of the important in professional
evaluator/teacher/classm translation commissioner, translation
ates the context and the ‘real- • Taught at universities
world’ purpose of the • Experience simulating
text. real-work situations.
Translations into a foreign language
For translators into a foreign language, it is difficult to achieve a fluent,
natural language production.
Example of an Italian student’s translation unaware that the adjective
middle-aged is used only for people in their forties-fifties.(Stewart,
2012: 8)
Take a look at middle-aged streets
instead of
the town’s medieval streets
Translating into mother tongue and into a foreign
language
Translating into mother Into a foreign Language:
tongue: • The strength of the translator is the
• Strength: expression into a target text understanding of the Source text
• Weakness: lack of understanding the • Potential weakness: expression in the
subtle nuances of the foreign source foreign target text.
texts.
(Stewart , 2012: 10)
English as Lingua Franca (EFL)
EFL is considered to be:
• A vehicular language
• Clear
• Coherent
• Without culture-specific idioms or expressions.
HOWEVER, if translating a scientific text for an automobile company whose
intended readers are all employees, I may assume a given level of English and
familiarity with specific lexis sector.
Example
(Stewart, 2012:22)
Si costeggia il lungo muro che delimita l’area degli istituti Ospedalieri e poi si arriva
al Ponte Catena.
Suggested Translation:
Walk beside the long wall next to the hospital and before long you reach Ponte
Catena.
Students’ translation
Walk along the long wall which delimits the area of the hospital buildings and then
you arrive to Ponte Catena
Discussion
Along – the phrase “along a wall” gives the impression that one is
walking on top of the wall
Delimits- for delimit the Oxford Advanced Learner’s gives ‘to decide
what the limits are’ while the Longman is ‘to set or say where
exactly the limits of something are’. The definitions assign
importance to the notion of making a decision about the placement
of limits, whereas there is an indication of what the limit is.
Arrive to- common mistake. Arrive at o arrive in, depending on the
context.
British English, or American English?
That is the question.
When translating, we need to ask ourselves :
• Who is going to read the translation? Will the readers be of
any nationality or native speakers?
• Which style will be more appropriate?
Not knowing the target readership can be problematic.
When Italian native speakers were asked to translate tourist
texts from Italian into English for a readership of non-native
English speakers, most of them chose British English
(Stewart, 2013).
Native varieties, in particular Standard British English, are
considered more prestigious than non native varieties
(Stewart, 2013: 222)
From Pro Loco to Pro Globo (Torresi 2010: 76,109)
From orientation towards the local to orientation towards the global.
Dominic Stewart ran an experiment in 2013:
Italian students had to translate tourist texts from Italian into English for a
non-native English readership.
When assessing the students, the translation trainer looks at:
• Suitable translation strategies
• Ability to make good use of linguistic resources
Country- or culture-specific usage
Example 1.
Bank Holiday
La villa è visitabile tutti i giorni festivi, nei seguenti orari
You can visit the villa on Sundays and bank holidays at the following times:
The collocation bank holiday is labelled ‘British’ in dictionaries and the term is likely
to generate confusion (a holiday only for banks?) among readers across the
globe.
Public holidays or national holidays would be preferable.
Example 2
A-road
Il Lago di Braies ….è facilmente raggiungibile grazie ad una comoda strada che collega il
lago alla strada pusterese tra Monguelfo e Villabassa.
You can easily reach Lake Braies thanks to a main road linking the lake to the Pusteria
Valley A-road between Monguelfo and Villabassa.
A-Road is very British. A less culture-bound term is advisable.
Proper nouns
Place names have semantic and referential meanings which
can be crucial for the understanding of a text.
If we assume that most readers would be Romance language speakers,
we wouldn’t need to translate them. However, a pragmatic explicitation
could be included.
STRADA PANORAMICA – PANORAMIC ROAD
BNC – 1 occurrence
COCA – NO occurrences
GOOGLE – 105.000 hits (many of these from…Italian websites!)
SCENARI – SCENERIES
Scenery has traditionally been regarded as an uncountable noun.
Google: 17 million hits
BNC: 1 occurrence vs. 744 occurrences for the singular form
COCA: 3 occurrences vs. 2500 occurrences for the singular form
-- hits need to be contextualized--
When British English confuses the issue
Country House (BE) :
‘ A large house of historical interest in the countryside, owned
by a rich and important family, often for many generations’.
However, the translation is intended for a cross-section of
readers from all over the world, the great majority of whom
will not be aware that country house carries such a grand
meaning (Stewart, 2013:229).
Houses of worship
House of worship is not common in BE.
– It has 270 occurrences in COCA and it is a standard term in
Malaysia and Singapore.
– For a British native speaker house of worship would probably give
him/her the idea of non Catholic churches.
– On the other hand, readers with low level of English would not
probably know the meaning of worship.
REFERENCES
• Cappelli, G. (2008). “The translation of tourism-related websites and localization:
Problems and perspectives”. In Baicchi, A., (ed.), Voices on translation, RILA Rassegna
Italiana di Linguistica Applicata, pages 97–115. Bulzoni Editore, Roma.
• Cappelli G (2012), “Travelling in Space: Spatial Representation in English and Italian
Tourism Discourse”, Textus, XXV(1), 19-36
• Manca, E. (2012), “Translating the Language of Tourism across Cultures: From
Functionally Complete Units of Meaning to Cultural Equivalence”, Textus, XXV(1), 51-68.
• Stewart, D. (2012). Translating tourist texts from Italian to English as a foreign language.
Napoli: Liguori. (introduction and chapter 1)
• Stewart D.(2013) “From pro loco to pro globo. Translating into English for an
international readership”, The interpreter and translator trainer, 7(2): 217-234
