Transfer of meaning in tourist brochure translations

• Main Author: Luonua, M.-M. (Matti-Mikael)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oulu 2013
• Subjects: English Philology; Muonio; Pello; Tornio; Lapland
• Online Access: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201303191112

The topic of this thesis concerns the translation of tourist brochures and how the message of the original text, along with the intended perlocution, are transferred to the translated text. The thesis mainly looks at translations from Finnish to English. There are two exceptions, where translations in Italian, German, Swedish and Russian were also looked at for comparison. The analysed translations were found from ten brochures that were collected from the Tornio and Pello tourist information offices, and two websites that promote locations in Muonio and in Tornio, respectively. The brochures promote locations situated in Lapland except for one, which promotes the food culture of Finland. The theoretical background for the text includes Relevance Theory and the linguistic concepts of locution, illocution, and perlocution. The analysis utilises concepts from translation theory, including functional, cultural and descriptive equivalents, transference, and the covert and overt methods. The goal of the analysis was to see how the aforementioned concepts from translation theory are used in tourist brochure translations to transfer the meaning of the original text to the translated text, and if the translation process has a negative effect on the relevance and intended perlocution, which in turn can lower the attraction of the brochure and the promoted location. The goal also included seeing if translators attempt to avoid this negative effect and if they do, what are the measures that are taken to prevent it. The results of the study reveal that in some cases, the translators do in fact seem to recognise the importance of relevance and the transferral of intended perlocution, thus striving to improve relevance and take measures to aid the transferral of intended perlocution. In other cases, the translators did not seem to hold relevance and perlocution in importance. In these cases the relevance could even be lowered. It seems that the most negative effect on the translation was created when text was omitted in the ...