Within the various text genres incident to tourism communication, the travel guide is undoubtedly a very interesting one. It is a rather unstandardised text genre, characterised by the interplay of various communicative functions at work and composed of several textual subgenres (orientation texts, background texts, sightseeing texts, counselling texts) (Fandrych/Thurmair 2011). Travel guides are generally written by a sender who is member of the same linguistic and cultural community of the final receivers, and who acts as mediator between the ''known world'' and the more or less "exotic" destinations promoted in the text; but there might also be translated versions of successful travel guide series into different and several languages (e.g. the German Marco Polo and the English Lonely planet). The translation of travel guides requires the adaptation of the source text to the needs of the new receivers according to a pragmatic-functional approach (Vermeer/Reiß 1984; Nord 1995) that considers the translator as an expert in intercultural mediation. Moving from a precedent exploratory study (Baumann/Tonelli 2014), this paper focuses on the adaptation strategies emerging from an analysis of Italian translations of German travel guides and German translations of Italian travel guides dedicated to the same destination: Italy and its regions. The assumption is that adaptation strategies relate to different textual aspects depending on the specific translation direction: in the German translations of Italian travel guides, adaptation mainly concerns the textual macrostructure, while in the Italian translations of German travel guides adaptation concerns particularly semantic and pragmatic aspects linked to the representation of the tourist destination. The cultural distance between Germany and Italy leads in fact to very evident stereotypical representations (die Italiener [the Italians]) that need to be adapted in the Italian translations due to the lower cultural difference of the target text receivers.
Strategies of adaptation in the translation of German and Italian travel guides / Baumann, Tania. - (2018), pp. 183-201.
Strategies of adaptation in the translation of German and Italian travel guides
Baumann, Tania
2018-01-01
Abstract
Within the various text genres incident to tourism communication, the travel guide is undoubtedly a very interesting one. It is a rather unstandardised text genre, characterised by the interplay of various communicative functions at work and composed of several textual subgenres (orientation texts, background texts, sightseeing texts, counselling texts) (Fandrych/Thurmair 2011). Travel guides are generally written by a sender who is member of the same linguistic and cultural community of the final receivers, and who acts as mediator between the ''known world'' and the more or less "exotic" destinations promoted in the text; but there might also be translated versions of successful travel guide series into different and several languages (e.g. the German Marco Polo and the English Lonely planet). The translation of travel guides requires the adaptation of the source text to the needs of the new receivers according to a pragmatic-functional approach (Vermeer/Reiß 1984; Nord 1995) that considers the translator as an expert in intercultural mediation. Moving from a precedent exploratory study (Baumann/Tonelli 2014), this paper focuses on the adaptation strategies emerging from an analysis of Italian translations of German travel guides and German translations of Italian travel guides dedicated to the same destination: Italy and its regions. The assumption is that adaptation strategies relate to different textual aspects depending on the specific translation direction: in the German translations of Italian travel guides, adaptation mainly concerns the textual macrostructure, while in the Italian translations of German travel guides adaptation concerns particularly semantic and pragmatic aspects linked to the representation of the tourist destination. The cultural distance between Germany and Italy leads in fact to very evident stereotypical representations (die Italiener [the Italians]) that need to be adapted in the Italian translations due to the lower cultural difference of the target text receivers.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
