Pragmatic potential of audioguides as a feature to be preserved in translation

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Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Pragmatic potential of audioguides as a feature to be preserved in translation

Manyatsa M.S.

Annotation

The article makes an attempt to analyze multilingual audio guides as a convenient tool for tourism industry and determine their role in presenting the country's image. It describes the evolving tendency, developed in a recent decade, to publish the audio guides online to reach a bigger and more versatile audience. The article also discusses the issue of the pragmatic potential of the text applying it to the content of multilingual audio guides. Additionally, it describes the role that proper translation of audio guides and preserving their original pragmatic influence on the target audience plays in providing foreign tourists with the proper information and reaching the desired communicative effect. The article describes the most importantfunctions of the tourist texts: to inform the readers, to attract them to the specific destination, to portray its authenticity and uniqueness, as well as to induce the tourists to come and experience all the charms of the advertized places in person. In this regard, several excerpts of the texts, taken from the audio guides presented via an izi.TRAVEL platform are analyzed in detail to find out if the pragmatic potential of the original audio guide is preserved and to what extent it is rendered in the target version. The issue of pragmatic adaptation as the way to make the text with a lot of culture- and geography-specific information more understandable and interesting for the multicultural audience is touched upon. Such translation transformations as addition, omission, generalization, sentence fragmentation, etc. were revealed to be utilized as the means of pragmatic adaptation within the translation of tourist audio guides.

Key words: audio guide, pragmatic potential, communicative effect, pragmatic adaptation, translation.

Анотація

Маняца М.С. Прагматичний потенціонал аудіогідів - збереження під час перекладу

У статті зроблено спробу проаналізувати аудіогіди як зручний інструмент для найважливіших агентів у сфері туристичної індустрії та визначити їхню роль у представленні іміджу країни. У статті також описано тенденцію, яка набула розвитку впродовж останнього десятиліття, - публікувати аудіогіди в мережі Інтернет, щоб охопити якомога більшу та різноманітнішу аудиторію. У статті також обговорюється проблематика прагматичного потенціалу тексту в застосуванні його до контенту аудіогідів. Крім того, описано роль, яку відіграє правильний переклад аудіогідів та збереження їх оригінального прагматичного впливу на цільову аудиторію в наданні іноземним туристам належної інформації та досягненні бажаного комунікативного ефекту.

У статті описано найважливіші функції туристичних текстів: інформувати читачів, привертати їх увагу до конкретної туристичної дестинації, відображати її автентичність та унікальність, а також спонукати туристів приїхати та особисто побачити всі принади рекламованих місць. У цьому світлі детально проаналізовано кілька уривків текстів, взятих з аудіогідів, представлених на платформі izi.TRAVEL, щоб з'ясувати, чи збережено прагматичний потенціал оригінального аудіогіда та наскільки він відображений у цільовій перекладеній версії. У статті також порушується питання прагматичної адаптації як способу зробити текст з великою кількістю специфічної культурно-географічної інформації більш зрозумілим і цікавим для багатокультурної аудиторії. Встановлено, що для прагматичної адаптації при перекладі проаналізованих туристичних аудіогідів найчастіше використовуються такі перекладацькі трансформації, як додавання, опущення, генералізація, членування речень тощо, встановлені для використання як засоби.

Ключові слова: аудіогід, прагматичний потенціал, комунікативний ефект, прагматична адаптація, переклад.

Introduction

Presently, tourism is one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world, bringing countries and communities a fair amount of income from serving inner and outer travelers. A lot of various institutions (state and private ones), agencies, museums, theatres, tour guides, and other stakeholders extensively use various tools that help to spark the tourists' interest in visiting certain places or participating in certain events. One of such convenient tools that was introduced into a world practice long ago and gained special popularity in recent years is a whole range of multilingual audio guides, that can be either accessed online on the Internet or found at popular tourist destinations such as museums, galleries, exhibitions, and other locations both throughout the world and also in Ukraine. Audio guides are beneficial for both tourists and institutions of various kinds. One of the ways they might serve tourist facilities and attract additional audience from around the world is to offer a multilingual audio excursion (or provide some useful information) in case there is no opportunity to do that in person and in real time. Tourists, in turn, can choose the language of an excursion, time and exact exhibitions to visit. One more great opportunity which has appeared recently is obtaining free access to online audio guides about thousands of tourist destinations. When designed properly, such tours can add to the attractiveness of the destination, influencing the viewers in the most positive way and communicating the messages of interest, authenticity, and unique travelling experiences. As audio guides are created specifically and are aimed at covering the largest possible audience, their proper translation, preservation of the source texts' pragmatic potential and rendering a desired communicative effect are crucial in fulfilling this purpose. In this respect, the purpose of this article is to analyze the texts of audio guides about Ukraine, establish their possible pragmatic potential and determine to which extent it is rendered in the translations of the studied pieces.

Literature review. The notion of the pragmatic potential of the text was first suggested at the end of the 20th century by a theorist of translation studies Vilen Komissarov. He states that any created text is communicative by its nature and can either be purely informative or evoke emotions, shape opinions and attitudes towards the discussed issues, induce some actions, and influence the readers/listeners in many different ways. Such influence is considered pragmatic, and the ability of the text “to achieve a communicative effect, to evoke a pragmatic attitude of the recipient to the message, in other words, to perform a pragmatic impact on the recipient of the information is called pragmatic aspect or pragmatic potential (pragmatics) of a text” [3, p. 209]. As continued by Komissarov, the recipient's pragmatic attitude to the text (message) does not solely depend on the pragmatics of the text itself. It also depends “on the recipient's personality, their background knowledge, previous experience, and other peculiarities”. Analysis of the source text pragmatics allows for an approximate definition of a possible pragmatic influence on an “average” recipient [3, p. 209]. The translation of any text is a two-stage process. During the first stage, the translator serves as the recipient of the source text message, at this phase s/he tries to decode as much of both explicit and implicit information as possible. In this regard, the translator should have wide background knowledge of the source text culture. During the second stage, the translator serves as the sender of the target text message, adapting the text for the “average” target reader. The fact that the target reader belongs to a different language community than the source reader and might have different knowledge and experience, history and culture makes the translator introduce necessary changes to the target text, especially if the divergences between the source and target cultures prevent the end-reader from fully understanding the text. S/he explicates or omits the information that can be misunderstood or is not crucial for the target reader. The process may require explication of the implicit information, concretiza- tion, generalization, addition, omission or a complete change of some notions. These transformations serve for the pragmatic adaptation of the text, the main task of which is to provide the target reader with a proper understanding of the message [3, pp. 210-214]. An important step for choosing the best tools for the pragmatic adaptation of the text is proper determining the function, performed by the source text. The main purpose of tourist texts is to propose, portray and offer services and products of a given area and to pass on the information to the potential visitor. They are designed to invite the readers to come, aimed at making the potential tourist destination attractive, and providing tourists with the essential information about what they are going to experience and how they can plan their trip better [6, p. 15]. Referring to what the text communicates, Sanning singles out 3 main broad functions: expressive, informative, and vocative. As explained by Sanning, the expressive function represents the mind of the speaker, the writer, or the originator of the text as s/he expresses their feelings irrespective of any response. The core of the informative function is an external aspect, the facts of a topic, that is, reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories. The core of the vocative function is the readership, the addressee. The term “vocative” is used in the sense of “calling upon” the readership to act, think or feel, in fact, to “react” in the way intended by the text [5, p. 125]. Following Sanning, we believe that the most important is the vocative function, because “tourist texts are a type of popular reading material for ordinary people. The purpose is to attract the tourists' attention, arouse their interest and give them an aesthetic impression, so that they may be persuaded to visit the tourist attraction and gain knowledge of the nature, culture, history and customs of the tourist attraction through reading the text” [5, p. 125]. The scholar also dwells upon the aesthetic function and cultural value of the tourist texts, which “is manifested primarily through three aspects: the inherent values in natural views like rivers, lakes, mountains and so on; the traditional values long-established in heritage such as habits, traditions, practices, social structures, arts and crafts, etc.; and the artificial values held in man-made sights like palaces and temples, imperial tombs and underground museums, architecture and gardens, and elsewhere”, and suggests that the “ideal tourist texts should maintain such qualities as being informative, intriguing, realistic, practical, cultural, educational, humorous and even poetic” [5, p. 126]. Our analysis of online audio guides has confirmed that they perform, most of the time, informative, aesthetic and vocative functions, which are manifested in describing the tourist destination and promoting it in such a way, that a person is most likely to come and visit these places in person.

Regarding the multicultural audience of tourist audio guides and the impossibility to predict the background knowledge of the future recipient, the complexity of translators' task includes preserving as much of the source text's authentic pragmatic potential as possible and rendering it in the most understandable for the foreign audience way. It was masterfully summed up by Isabel Duran Munoz, who emphasized the mediation role of translation in the tourism sector and stated that “translators must keep the essence of the source text, its content, its function, its cultural references, and at the same time they must approach the translation to the target audience, by making the content comprehensive, promoting the destination and making it closer to them” [4, p. 31].

Results and Discussion

The material for this research is presented by audio guides about Ukraine as well as their translations presented on the platform izi.TRAVEL. According to their website, izi. TRAVEL is the: “go-to platform for the travel market: a dynamic hub where thousands of content providers can easily create multimedia guides for millions of travelers” [6]. The platform presents nearly 15 000 guides about 121 countries. The website operates in 11 languages (interface), and even more languages are used within the audio guides themselves.

The website has a clear structure and a userfriendly interface: all the menus are placed cohesively through web pages. After choosing a location the system shows all the available guides together with the languages into which they are translated. The majority of guides about Ukraine operate in Ukrainian/Rus- sian, and a lot of them are also presented in English. One might also find guides in Polish. All the guides can be accessed in an online mode, a lot of them can also be downloaded to the users' devices, using QR codes located near the tour's title.

All the guides share a similar structure: the list of tracks containing the audio guides themselves, which are usually accompanied by text, and often images (photos of the featured places) are provided. Sometimes one might find an interactive map featuring all the places from the audio excursion.

The corpus of the research consisted of 200 guides about Ukraine. Analysis showed that out of these 200 only 69 presented practical interest having English as one of the operating languages. Some other audio guides were presented in German (6), in Polish (5), and only one - in French. Since the guides are created by the platform users and it is the author's decision which languages the guide would be operating in, a lot of them operate only in Ukrainian or Russian and present no interest for a deeper analysis.

Regarding that tourism is an activity which involves the direct contact between cultures comprising folklore, customs, traditions, geographic locations, gastronomy, etc., any type of tourism content, including that presented in audio guides serves as a joint element between tourists, the place they are visiting, and their cultures. Presenting a wide range of culture and geography-specific information, the texts of audio guides have a huge pragmatic potential which can be simply explained as additional information that is to be decoded from the text itself. Failure to preserve the pragmatic potential of the source text would prevent the target audience from proper decoding this additional information. Instead, the successful translation of authentic information, which often bears most of the pragmatic potential, would help in picturing the overall attractive image of the suggested tourist destination, would help to render important aspects of Ukrainian culture that are encoded in the suggested audio guides. Here, it is important to take into account that the source texts for the audio guides are often written by people who know a lot about the subject or concept they describe. That is why, a lot of valuable information might be implicit. At the same time, the translations are made for people who belong to a different linguistic and cultural community, might have a different attitude to life and history, different background knowledge, etc. Most often, tourists are not familiar with Ukrainian culture and, therefore need more explicit information to grasp the presented ideas. Therefore, while analyzing the translated audio guides, we tried to determine whether the translations preserve the pragmatic potential of the source text. The use of several types of translation transformations such as text compression, omission, addition, generalization, etc was revealed which will be exemplified through the actual analysis of the audio guides' texts. tourist audio guide pragmatic text translation

First, we would like to analyze the texts from the audioguide Музей «Пам'ять єврейського народу та Голокост в Україні» [7] - Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” [8] (Table 1).

Let us consider the first example. The given excerpt is among those of an introductory nature, preceding the entire audio guide and informing the visitors about religious bases of Jews' life. The function of the source text is primarily informative as it is intended to inform the visitors about the subject of the first section of the museum - Holy Scripture of Jews. The text refers to generally known information, which is likely to be familiar to most tourists. The translation performs the same function of informing the visitors (or listeners), therefore, the pragmatic potential of the source text is almost preserved. However, in the translation of the sixth sentence, an attempt of pragmatic adaptation was made - the information was generalized; the phrase “different language versions” was provided instead of indicating the specific languages. On the one hand, such translation helps to prevent over concretization of information that might entangle the readers/listeners. On the other hand, such translation lacks clarity on what exact translations of Commandments are presented in the given museum. Therefore, part of useful information is lost, and so is the part of the communicative effect (Table 2).

The second example under analysis is taken from the same audio guide. The source text informs the audience about certain parts of the exhibits, as well as provides the explanation upon the peculiarities of one of the exhibited items. The text is writ- ten in a manner that evokes interest of the listeners to visit in person and see the exhibit themselves, thus performing a vocative function. The translation has a similar pragmatic potential as the source text has, performing also both informative and vocative functions. The translation of the fifth sentence exemplifies a successful use of addition to improve the understanding of the text by the target audience. The part of the sentence “which are written and pronounced in the same way” is added to explain what the word “homonym” means.

Table 1

Table 2

Additionally, it is important to mention that the analyzed audio guide contains the photograph of the room where the exhibition is located. However, this picture does not fully represent the exhibition, because it only portrays a general view (Fig.1). Apparently, as one can observe the displayed book, and a sculpture, the text corresponds to the accompanied picture.

In general, the translation of the analyzed portion of the audio guide has a similar effect on the target audience, as the source language guide has. The fact that Moses is depicted with horns on his head provides for the intellectual surprise (sentence 2) and the reason why these horns appeared and what they have to do in a sculpture of a prophet is successfully rendered with the help of introducing the additional information (sentence 5).

The next audio guide we would like to analyze is «Народні ремесла» [9] - “Folk crafts”, in particular, its part - “The Weaver's Courtyard” [10].

The audio guide contains audio tracks, accompanied by text and images. An interactive map is also presented. However, the map operates in Ukrainian exclusively and provides no information for foreign tourists. So the informative function of the source audio guide is not fully conveyed to the target users (Table 3).

The source text under analysis performs an informative function, it describes the exact exhibition і.e. the weaver's courtyard and the buildings in it as well as the interior of the house. The audio guide is accompanied by several photos, showing the house itself as well as its interior, other household buildings in the yard. The text of the audio guide corresponds to the images provided, thus attempting to create an integral image of a household of a Ukrainian weaver. However, neither Ukrainian, nor English versions of the audio guide have no captions to the illustrative materials, which could have explained the purpose of the depicted objects to the visitor who is unfamiliar with Ukrainian culture, crafts, traditions, etc. The source text is rich in realia, describing culture and profession-specific items, and performing a vocative function of calling the listener to see some authentic items and experience what the life of Ukrainians looked like a couple of centuries ago. During the process of translation, several types of transformations were utilized for pragmatic adaptation of the text.

In the second sentence, the omission is used: повітка для худоби на дві половини is simply translated as a shed for cattle, without mentioning that this is a 2-chamber or 2-part building. However, this information is not crucial in the text and its omission makes the overall idea easier for understanding by foreign tourists, therefore preserving the pragmatic function of the sentence - informing about the existence of household buildings for animals in the yard - and creating a corresponding pragmatic effect on the target audience. The analyzed translation renders the implicit pragmatic meaning that the owners of the household did not only work on creating fabrics, but were also engaged in livestock breeding to help feed the family and live sustainably.

Fig. 1. A picture, accompanying the audio guide about museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”

Table 3

Then, sentence integration, generalization, omission and addition are used simultaneously for sentences 3 and 4 as well as the part of sentence 5 of the source text. The information from two sentences is rendered into a single sentence in a target text. “Both buildings” in the source text are generalized into “all buildings” in the target text. Such generalization causes a certain loss in the clarity of the text. Next, the information on the materials, the buildings are constructed from is completely omitted in the translation, whereas the date of moving the house to the museum is added. It originates from the 5^th sentence of the source text which is substantially abridged in the translation as a lot of information is omitted. These transformations were aimed at making the text easier for a foreigner, who is unfamiliar with the history, culture, and traditions of Ukrainian people, and might not need too much of the specific information on the dates, exact figures, etc. However, in our opinion, the audio guide would benefit if this information would have been rendered, since it presents valuable insights into the peculiarities of Ukrainian culture. This information also provides a certain level of authenticity, which is lost in the translation. Further, it might be interesting to strengthen the authenticity of the suggested destination by adding a tiny clarification concerning the history of the village. This village was flooded due to the construction of the Kaniv Reservoir in early 1970s, and adding this fact to the translation would have enhanced the tourists' experience, and impression of something unique, something that cannot be observed anywhere else. Therefore, the pragmatic potential of the source text - inform tourists about something new, specific, and different from their culture - is partially lost.

For the fifth sentence of the source text, sentence fragmentation is used: the sentence is split into two parts, the first one being almost excluded from the translation, and the second part being rendered as the 4th sentence of the target text. It contains a realia word “siny” which is translated through transliteration without adding any explanation of what the meaning of this word is. Additionally, having analyzed the previous audio tracks with the texts that accompany them, we revealed that they do not contain any explanation either. This would make the audio tour more complicated for foreign tourists as “siny” means nothing to them. Therefore, the pragmatic the source sentence's potential of conveying something authentic, interesting, something that is characteristic for our country is not unfolded in the translated audio guide. Here, it might be useful to add some explanations that the concept “siny” presents a kind of transitional uninhabited part of peasant houses. Usually, it connects the living space with a porch or divides the house into two living spaces. It also serves as a storage area for winter coats, boots, and farming tools as well as helps keep the winter cold from entering the actual living space when the front door is being opened. Furthermore, the source text “хата” is rendered as “living room”, although, the idea of the “living room” in the understanding of, say, Americans, is very distant from the idea of traditional Ukrainian “khata”, which is a common living space where people sleep, work, cook meals, eat, communicate, pray - do everything that constitutes life - and all this happens in one single space, that was occasionally divided into rooms in the houses of wealthy people. Here again, a considerable part of the source sentence's pragmatic potential of providing the possible visitors with the information about something new, unique and never experienced before, as well as motivating them to come and plunge into an ancient atmosphere of rural life is not rendered in the translation. Conclusively, a great part of the communicative effect of the source text is lost and does not reach the target audience.

The 5th sentence of the target text (6th sentence of the source text) is characterized by simultaneous use of omission and addition. The translation of the realia word “pil” is clarified by adding an explanation “bench for sleeping”. However, the source text “sudnyk”, which is a piece of furniture, most often a shelf, for storing cooking utensils, dishes, and some food, is omitted in the target text, in the same way, no translation is provided as to the place where icons are located. The omission of “sudnyk” might be justified for not overloading the tourists with a lot of specific information. One might assume that a piece of furniture for storing is somehow a shared concept in many different cultures. In this respect, overloading the translation with additional information might avoided, sacrificing minor details in order to be able to add some explicit information in other places to strengthen the communicative effect of the text. However, if the person visits the museum in person, they can find themselves confused not knowing what types of objects they see. Furthermore, omission in the case of not rendering the place where icons are located in the house, in my opinion, harms the target text more. It is worth mentioning that Ukrainian houses had a special “icon corner” that was considered a holy place in the house and a place for worship (Fig.2).

Fig. 2. Icon corner within the interior of the house

This concept has a pragmatic potential of representing Ukrainians as faithful and religious people and failure to keep this communicative effect present in the translations leaves a considerable gap in picturing the overall image of Ukrainians as a nation and a society.

Therefore, despite the attempts to make the translation easier and more understandable for foreign audience, the pragmatic potential of the source text is not fully preserved in the translation.

The next example for the detailed analysis is taken from the same audio guide about folk crafts (Table 4).

Table 4

The next portion of the same audio guide telling about folk crafts illustrates the assumption of Graham Dann, who stated that “via static and moving pictures, written texts and audio-visual offerings, the language of tourism attempts to persuade, lure, woo and seduce millions of human beings, and, in doing so, convert them from potential into actual clients” [2, p.79]. The source text describes tools and devices for weaving, items that are unique in modern time when almost nobody weaves clothing or carpets, but are used to buying them ready-made (Fig. 3). It performs not only an informative function, but also a vocative one - to invite potential tourists to visit the place in person, feel this unique ancient atmosphere, experience something unique and unknown.

When analyzing this piece of the audio guide's content, we observed that the text and the audio as well are substantially compressed. The first two sentences of this example are omitted, and the third and the fourth ones are translated in a very general way, providing too little of the specific authentic information. This issue might be viewed from two different perspectives: first, such generalization can be beneficial for the foreign tourist by not giving too much information that is hard to understand. On the other hand, this specific information about the specific items and tools used for weaving constitutes one of most important pieces in this audio guide, immersing tourists in a world, different from their own. Therefore, omitting this information in the process of translation ruins the pragmatic potential of travelling through time, distance and professions. Additionally, those who visit the museum in person and see different items are not able to find any information about them and their use, unless they ask specialists, working in the museum. Taking into account all the attempts to adapt the translation to the target audience, the translation lacks authenticity to some extent, as a lot of valuable information is omitted and most of its pragmatic potential is, unfortunately, lost.

Fig. 3. Weaving tools within the interior of the house

Conclusions

Summing up, audio guides present a convenient tool of representing tourist attractions. The texts of online audio guides, providing a great variety of culture-specific information, possess a strong pragmatic potential, which, when rendered meaningfully, contributes greatly to the attractiveness of the described tourist destination. In such a way, the translated audio guide is most likely to perform a vocative function, similar to that of the source original material - picture a true image of Ukrainian culture and its artifacts, attract the tourists, and persuade them to visit the location in person. The detailed analysis of several excerpts of the presented audio guides has shown that in some cases adaptation of the translation strengthens the pragmatic influence on the target audience. On the other hand, omission of authentic information that often might be a core of the pragmatic potential of the text to immerse the audience in unique atmosphere of old days, can ruin the pragmatic influence of the text - seducing people to come and see everything in person. In general, purposeful attempts to preserve the pragmatic potential of the source text and ensuring that the target text has a similar communicative effect are a characteristic feature of audio guides' rendering with translators trying both to simplify some specific texts, and render the authentic information. Some of these attempts turn truly successful and help enhance the tourist experience. However, the very balancing between two extremes - oversimplification of the text, while losing some of its authenticity on one hand - and keeping the text authentic making it too difficult to understand, on the other hand, is not a trivial task for the translator. Therefore, sometimes the communicative effect of the translation is considerably weaker than that of the source text, presenting a vast field for future research in this area.

References

1. izi.TRAVEL

2. Dann G. (1996) The language of tourism: a sociolinguistic perspective, CAB International. - 298 p.

3. Komissarov V. (1990) Teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskiye aspekty): Uchebnik dlya institutov i fakultetov inostrannykh yazykov. - Moskva: Vysshaya Shkola;

4. Munoz I. (2011). Tourist translations as a mediation tool: misunderstandings and difficulties. Cadernos de Traduqao. 1 (27)

5. Sanning H. (2010) Lost and Found in Translating Tourist Texts Domesticating, Foreignising or Neutralising Approach. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 3, 124-137;

6. Zorko J. (2014). Aspects and strategies of tourist texts translations: the case of Slovenia.info, Koper.

Sources of illustrative material

7. Музей «Пам'ять єврейського народу та Голокост в Україні»

8. «Народні ремесла»

9. Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”

10. Folk crafts

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