Translating the tourist gaze: from heritage and ‘culture’ to actual encounter

This paper covers two main areas. The first area is an analysis of the various facets and meanings of ‘heritage’ and ‘culture’ when linked to tourism, both in theory and in practice, with examples taken from Guide Books, Heritage sites and Tourism organisations. The focus is on the tourist gaze, as a necessarily simplified, generalised and distorted ‘pseudo’, or ‘staged’, model of ‘the Other’. Here the Environmental Bubble and Cultural Adjustment models are also briefly introduced. To conclude this section, the culture-bound tourist model of perception, along with tourist promotion, is categorised in terms of 3 macro levels of culture: the visible heritage; the more submersed practices and traditions of a people; and the more hidden system of internal values and beliefs that both form the model of reality and guide it. Secondly, the paper focusses on translation and Outsider interpretation. After a brief review of language phrase guides, the discussion turns to the translation of culture-bound concepts at the 3 macro-levels of culture and the need for the translator to have intercultural competence at those 3 levels. A translator must also follow the skopos; and to do so Greimas’ theory of action is introduced. The article concludes with translated texts focussing on skopos, culture-bound contexting styles; and on the Outsider Gaze, the Outsiders' needs and cultural orientations, taken from an analysis of traveller blog pages. In conclusion the article highlights how little emphasis is given to translator cultural competence, and introduces instruments to help the translator mediate for the culture-bound tourist.