I Just Wish the World was Twice as Big and Half of it was Still Unexplored: An Exploration of the Translation of Adjectives in Travel Guides

Abstract

As explored the world is, as Sir David Attenborough exclaims in his famous quote, as unexplored research on adjectives in translation is, let alone research on adjectives in translation within a specific genre, and what the effects and causes may be of particular (consistent) choices and/or shifts. Through a corpus of seven English source texts and seven Dutch target texts, the translation of adjectives in travel guides are explored. All texts are from the same publisher, Rough Guides, and they are divided into two subgenres: cities and countries. The cities are Barcelona, Istanbul and Rome, while the countries are Brazil, Canada, Kenya and Laos. Rough Guides is one of the frontrunners to develop a highly characteristic, personal style of writing, and is know for their clever style, where descriptive elements (such as adjectives) are used to portray wit, enthusiasm, and other characteristic traits. In total, 1,050 adjectives were collected from this corpus. The results showed that roughly twenty percent of all adjectives were not regularly translated in these travel guides, but either omitted or edited. The three most commonly used strategies in edited adjectives are: the replacement of adjectives with lexically deviant adjectives, the “emphasis change” strategy, and the “information change” strategy. The effect of these omitted and edited adjectives is that the target texts are more disconnected and flatter, and the specific style that Rough Guides is known for is diminished. Readers of the target text will also perceive the location differently, which may have further implications on their decisions to visit certain places. The results also showed that objective adjectives are more likely to be omitted, subjective adjectives to be edited, and objective adjectives to be regularly translated. This curiosity has led to the conclusion that the function of the target text is not to be strictly informative, but rather a blend of the three text functions: informative, expressive and appellative. It can also be speculated that the target audience was the reason behind these omitted and edited adjectives.