RELIGIOUS TERMS IN TOURIST TEXTS TRANSLATION: CROSS-CULTURAL DIMENSIONS

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to indicate the translation strategies and techniques that could be opted for while translating religion-related tourist promotional texts so that the target audience would get interested in the tourist objects. Methods. The analysis is based on the linguacultural approach which presupposes equal attention to linguistic presentation of the translation and its cross-cultural appropriateness. Specifically, we scrutinized the relevance of the equivalents on the textual level (lexical and grammatical correctness), the discourse level (conformity to the tourist discourse standards) and communicative level (maintenance of interactive relationship with the target audience). The method applied in the study is comparative analysis of the Ukrainian-English translation pairs. The results of the study testify to the strong tendency of translation adaptation which seems reasonable while the promotion of the destination is on the agenda. The data show that translation of religion-bound units in tourism promotional materials is predominantly based on the domestication approach, such as cultural adaptation of the religious terms through neutralization, generalization, reduction/compression, etc., and adaptation with explanation, particularly when dealing with specific theological concepts or historical church personalities. The foreignization approach which is implemented in literal translation of some religious terms without explanation is aimed at emphasizing the cultural singularity of the tourist object. Conclusions. Since the translation of religion-related tourist promotional texts is mostly expected to be target- recipient-oriented and transparent, it is cultural adaptation that should be opted for as the dominant strategy whereas the local strategy of preservation (literal or loan translation of religious terms) should be employed in a very sensitive and sensible manner after considering the extra-linguistic and linguistic factors, otherwise the overuse of literal translation will impede effective cross-cultural communication.