‘PEDAL TO PARADISE?’ THE ANGLO-MALAY ENCOUNTER IN TOURISM TRANSLATION

Abstract

Tourism is one of the world’s fastest growing industries and, therefore, one of the most important sectors marketed and promoted globally. Nevertheless, promoting tourism across languages and cultures might not be as straightforward as it may seem. Due to different worldviews and cultural values, tourism is conceptualised differently by different societies. These differing conceptualisations have significant implications on cross-cultural tourism promotion and, therefore, the translation of tourism promotional materials. Adopting the functional approach to translation and the nation of cultural conceptualisation, the paper explores the challenges involved in translating English tourism promotional materials into Malay and investigates the extent to which tourism themes employed to lure Anglophone tourists are compatible with the Malay culture. Three types of textual analysis are carried out: source text analysis, target text analysis, and parallel text analysis. The textual analyses are complemented by finding derived from focus groups. The findings of the study demonstrate how tourism is conceptualised within the post-sightseeing, anti-tourist framework in the Anglo culture, and how it is framed within the traditional sight-seeing framework for the Malay audience. Furthermore, the study also reveals that while original, non-translated tourism promotional materials, in both English and Malay, capitalise on their respective audience’s conceptualisation of tourism, translated tourism promotional materials might tend to overlook this important aspect leading to potential failure.