Translating the Style of Tourism Promotional Discourse: A Cross Cultural Journey into Stylescapes

Different societies behave and view the world differently due to different cultural values. These cultural values shape people's needs, motives, expectations and preferences. Based on these cultural values, themes are carefully selected and exploited by promoters in tourist promotional texts (TPTs) in order to persuade people to travel and become tourists. However, it seems that it is not only the themes that matter, but also the way they are communicated in TPTs. Different cultures have different ways of communicating, which in turn affects the stylistic features of TPTs. These stylistic differences pose a key challenge for translators of TPTs, whose role is to produce an effective translation in the target language and culture in order to persuade potential tourists in that language and culture. This paper analyses the style of an existing published translation of a tourism promotional website and discusses the cultural challenges involved. The discussion is supported by findings derived from focus groups and parallel text analyses.