AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 6, Number3. August 2022                              Pp.82-98
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol6no3.6

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Cultural Mediation in Tourism Translation: Saudi Arabia as a Case Study 

Eithar Alangari
English Department
Shaqra University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Email: esalloum@su.edu.sa

 

 Received:  05/11/2022           Accepted::07/26/2022                          Published:08/24/2022

 

Abstract:
Part of the recent Saudi National Transformation program Vision 2030 is the significant growth of the tourism sector. Opening up the country to international tourists means facilitating access to Saudi culture through translation, where the role of translators as cultural mediators is salient. In the Saudi context, cultural mediation in tourism translation is an under-researched topic. This paper addresses the following question: What is interventionst role of translators as cultural mediators and where do they position the tourist against Arabic-English translated Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) in Saudi-related tourism articles? Drawing on Kwieciński’s (2001) adaption of Venuti’s domestication and foreignization (1995), this study adopts a descriptive approach to analyze the translation strategies in a parallel corpus of Arabic and English articles published on the official website of Saudi tourism Visit Saudi. The findings reveal the active role of translators in providing access to the Saudi culture by extensively adopting the exoticization and explanation strategies in tourism texts to foreignize CSIs, especially in the contexts of traditions and food. This paper, thus, bridges the scholarly gap in Translation Studies by examining cultural mediation in translating tourism texts about Saudi Arabia, focusing on translators’ strategies and how they position Saudi CSIs in the international tourism industry.
Keywords: Culture-Specific Items, cultural mediation, exoticization, Saudi Arabia, tourism translation

Cite as: Alangari, E. (2022). Cultural Mediation in Tourism Translation: Saudi Arabia as a Case Study. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 6 (3) 82-98.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol6no3.6

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Received: 05/11/2022
Accepted: 07/26/2022
Published: 08/24/2022
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6282-4492
http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol6no3.6

Eithar Alangari is an assistant professor of Translation Studies at Shaqra University. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies form University of Liverpool and MA in English/Arabic Translation and Interpreting from Durham University. Her research interests include tourism translation, media translation, sociology of translation and audiovisual translation.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6282-4492