Traduzione turistica: dai corpora alla traduzione automatica (e viceversa)
10.6092/issn.2532-8816/15109
Il linguaggio turistico è contraddistinto da elementi che lo rendono unico e particolare rispetto ad altri linguaggi settoriali o tecnici. Molti sono gli studi o le traduzioni in ambitoo turistico mediante corpora; pochi sono invece i casi di traduzione automatica. Ancor meno sono gli articoli accademici in ambito turistico dedicati ad un confronto tra testi tradotti automaticamente e testi tradotti con l'ausilio di corpora. Il presente articolo mira a colmare tale lacuna prefiggendosi di verificare se ed in che misura la traduzione automatica dall'italiano all'inglese di testi turistici tramite Google Translate può essere considerata affidabile o, almeno, accettabile. A tal fine, il presente studio confronta la traduzione automatica di testi turistici con le rispettive traduzioni effettuate mediante consultazione di corpora settoriali. I risultati ottenuti mostrano che la traduzione automatica tende a trascurare aspetti lessicali della lingua di arrivo, oltre che convenzioni di scrittura, quali la struttura delle frasi, il linguaggio figurato e l'uso di pronomi personali. La traduzione automatica sembra invece dare risultati sosddisfacenti laddove i testi assolvono a funzioni meramente descrittive ed informative, con frasi meno complesse ed assenza di linguaggio vivo. Ciò, tuttavia, potrebbe difficilmente ricondursi alla categoria di linguaggio turistico. Il presente studio evidenzia quindi la necessità di affinare gli algoritmi dei programmi di traduzione automatica affinché si affrontino e risolvano le lacune lessicali segnalate. Infine, gli autori sostengono che la traduzione automatica in ambito turistico può essere effettuata se si è in grado di discernere l'uso delle parole nel contesto.
application/pdf
2532-8816
15109
14
en
Martin Harper
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Umanistica Digitale
tourism language
Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://umanisticadigitale.unibo.it/
Articles
2023-01-11
2022-06-28
2023-01-04
2023-01-11
119-135
Um. Dig.
Martin Harper
2022
10.6092/issn.2532-8816/15109
119
University of Macerata
2532-8816
14
tourism language
en
135
Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)
https://umanisticadigitale.unibo.it/article/download/15109/15355
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022
P. Giampieri e M. Harper – Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)
DOI: http://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2532-8816/15109


  Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation
                          (and back)

                                         Patrizia Giampieri

                            School of Law - University of Camerino, Italy
                                      patrizia.giampieri@unicam.it




                                           Martin Harper

                     Centro Linguistico di Ateneo - University of Macerata, Italy
                                        martin.harper@unimc.it




       Abstract

Tourism language is characterised by features which make it distinct from any other Language
for Special Purposes (LSP). There are many examples of corpus-based studies and corpus-driven
translation in the tourism sector but little regarding machine translation. Fewer still are the case
studies or research papers dedicated to a comparison between machine-translated and corpus-
based translated tourism texts. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating whether, and
to what extent, Google machine translation (from Italian into English) of a variety of tourism
texts can be considered reliable or, at least, acceptable. To this end, it compares machine
translations of tourism texts to their respective corpus-based translations. The paper’s findings
uncover issues which mostly concern lexical and collocational choices, as well as a neglect of
certain English writing conventions, such as those relating to clause structures, ego-targeting and
figurative language. MT appears to perform well with informative and descriptive tourism texts,
where sentences are simpler and no vivid language is involved. These, however, could hardly
be considered representative of tourism texts, as a whole. The paper calls for advancements in
MT algorithms in order to address certain lexical and collocational issues. Moreover, it is the
opinion of the authors that MT in the tourism field is best left to translators capable of discerning
accurate word usage in context.
Keywords: machine translation; corpus-based translation; tourism texts; tourism translation;
tourism language
Il linguaggio turistico è contraddistinto da elementi che lo rendono unico e particolare rispetto
ad altri linguaggi settoriali o tecnici. Molti sono gli studi o le traduzioni in ambito turistico
mediante corpora; pochi sono invece i casi di traduzione automatica. Ancor meno sono gli articoli
accademici in ambito turistico dedicati ad un confronto tra testi tradotti automaticamente e testi
tradotti con l’ausilio di corpora. Il presente articolo mira a colmare tale lacuna prefiggendosi
di verificare se ed in che misura la traduzione automatica dall’italiano all’inglese di testi


                                                 119
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



turistici tramite Google Translate può essere considerata affidabile o, almeno, accettabile. A
tal fine, il presente studio confronta la traduzione automatica di testi turistici con le rispettive
traduzioni effettuate mediante consultazione di corpora settoriali. I risultati ottenuti mostrano
che la traduzione automatica tende a trascurare aspetti lessicali della lingua di arrivo, oltre che
convenzioni di scrittura, quali la struttura delle frasi, il linguaggio figurato e l’uso di pronomi
personali. La traduzione automatica sembra invece dare risultati sosddisfacenti laddove i testi
assolvono a funzioni meramente descrittive ed informative, con frasi meno complesse ed assenza
di linguaggio vivo. Ciò, tuttavia, potrebbe difficilmente ricondursi alla categoria di linguaggio
turistico. Il presente studio evidenzia quindi la necessità di affinare gli algoritmi dei programmi
di traduzione automatica affinché si affrontino e risolvano le lacune lessicali segnalate. Infine, gli
autori sostengono che la traduzione automatica in ambito turistico può essere effettuata se si è in
grado di discernere l’uso delle parole nel contesto.
Parole chiave: traduzione automatica; traduzione mediante corpora; testi turistici; traduzione
turistica; linguaggio turistico



       Introduction


       Tourism language
The language of tourism is peculiar because there are many elements which make it different
from other LSPs, such as the importance of the cultural factor in the source and target language;
informative and appellative (or persuasive) functions; the presence of vivid and figurative
expressions; languaging (i.e., the use of foreign words); grammatical elements such as clause
structure and the particular use of moods or tenses (e.g., the imperative or future), and ways to
address readers (e.g., by using the second singular or plural pronoun).
With regard to the cultural aspect, not only are translators called upon to render a language but
they also have to transfer elements of one culture into another ([25], 143). Cultural differences
can be challenging because they are not always crystal clear ([20], 18). Even so, they must be
taken into account when addressing tourism texts ([38], 332). A case in point would be culture-
bound words, which are terms or expressions referring to the customs and traditions of the source
culture. Scholars have dedicated several research papers to explaining how to tackle these features.
For example, Laviosa and Cleverton ([23]) suggest translation strategies such as paraphrasing,
combining borrowings with literal translations and/or explanations (ibid., 5). Other researchers
propose diverse approaches ranging from domesticating to foreignising ([34]).
The importance of cultural terminology should also be considered ([8];[9];[10];[14];[26]). Diki-
Kidiri ([8];[10]) argues that there is a correlation between culture and terminology, which is
referred to as “cultural terminology”. Cultural terminology has two main objectives: 1) developing
a terminological approach that takes into account cultural diversity and safeguards the needs
of different communities, and 2) implementing methods to effectively develop language and
culture ([8], 27-28). In addition, he draws parallelisms between individuals and the community
where they live, as people and their community develop a specific culture and identity ([9],
21). Individuals are cultural beings that develop culture by exploring their environment and


                                                120
               P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



accessing the new ([10]). These elements must be taken into account in the translation process.
Therefore, both a re-contextualisation of (i.e., the creation of a new cultural point of view) and a
reformulation in the target language are necessary ([9], 132).
Another reason tourism discourse is peculiar is that tourism texts serve two main communicative
purposes: informative and appellative or persuasive ([2]). Their informative function is to provide
the reader with technical or factual information whereas their appellative function is to produce
persuasive effects. Some scholars argue that the latter often prevails over the former ([1], 11)
whereas others claim that certain tourism texts present a balance between the two ([6], 104-5).
In some cases, their informative and appellative purposes may overlap, with one enhancing the
other ([2], 263).
Vivid and figurative language should certainly be considered when addressing the appellative
function of this kind of writing. Euphoric language, too, has become a feature of tourism
texts ([7], 65), as figurative expressions aim to reduce the sense of strangeness and transform
something unfamiliar into something beautiful and familiar ([7], 173). In this respect, some
scholars warn against an excessive use of vivid language, especially when translating into (British)
English. The reasons are manifold: on the one hand, languages such as Spanish or Italian are
more florid per se ([6]), whereas other languages are not. Therefore, translators from Spanish or
Italian should not indulge in figurative language too much, otherwise they may make the target
language sound unauthentic or artificial. On the other hand, the English language tends to be
vivid only when promoting faraway destinations ([22]). As a result, using vivid expressions for
continental destinations may be perceived as excessive.
Another strategy used in tourism texts is languaging, which consists of using foreign terms to
evoke an exotic feeling of adventure, or to make cultural references by resorting to culture-bound
words ([7], 183-5). Languaging is an important technique which translators must not disregard
or underestimate since, otherwise, the target text may expose a cultural gap and they would have
failed to create a connection between the source and target cultures ([5]).
Another thing that translators should take into account is clause structure, which follows a fixed
order in English, with a subject, a verb and an object ([25], 151). This might not be the case for
other languages, where clause structure may vary for reasons of emphasis and style ([25]). For
example, adverbial phrases of place and time are rather infrequent at the beginning of a sentence
in English tourism texts ([3], 143). In Italian, by contrast, adverbials of time and place, as well as
the thematisation (or fronting) of objects and complements are very frequent ([25], 151).
Also, ego-targeting ([7], 187-92) is a technique whereby the tourist is addressed with the second
singular person pronoun. Its aim is to make the addressee feel at ease. In languages other than
English, the writer addresses the holiday-maker more formally, e.g. through the passive voice
or with impersonal pronouns. In the Italian language, for instance, the impersonal si is fairly
frequent ([20], 23). Only in particularly empathic situations is the tourist addressed with the
second plural person voi.
The imperative and the will future are frequently used in English to encourage tourists to enjoy
their destination ([31], 193; [13], 337) or to exert control over them ([7], 79-84; [31], 192).
Text genre should also be taken into account when addressing tourism translation. Text genre
is argued to be intrinsically connected with terminology ([29], 263). In particular, Pecman and
Kübler ([29]) posit that genre is a dimension that allows users to analyse terminology, especially


                                                121
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



through textual corpora ([29], 264). Tourism language, in fact, has its own specific genres,
which can be investigated via corpus analysis. Corpora help focus on specific terminological
genre-related features and are useful to carry out contrastive analyses on registers, text types and
domains ([29]). As textual sources are used to compile corpora, it is important to consider genre
and its correlation with domain, corpus and text when approaching specific terminology ([29],
284).


       Corpora
Nowadays scholars argue that translation into a foreign language has become widespread and
acceptable ([36]), especially in the tourism sector ([36]). In fact, students of Translation Studies
are very likely to be confronted with tourism texts in the course of their careers ([36], 4-5). In
this respect, corpora can be useful as they provide users with samples of language patterns and
collocations (meaning both general and terminological collocations). Sinclair ([35], 170) defines
collocations as “the occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a
text”. General collocations are words with a general meaning that frequently appear together
in any genre of a given language ([24], 200). Terminological (or specialized) collocations, on
the other hand, are lexical combinations that occur in specialised discourse ([24], 201). Within
terminological collocations, a further distinction is made between genre-specific and domain-
specific collocations ([28]).
Consulting corpora reduces first language interference ([18], 20) as well as semantic, idiomatic
and syntactical errors ([21], 321). Amongst other things, corpora also allow users to find idiomatic
expressions and figurative language ([18], 17) which are relevant to tourism texts ([7], 2).
For these reasons, the advantages of corpus-based translation in the tourism sector have been long
highlighted by numerous scholars ([17];[12];[16];[18];[19];[39];[20]). Gatto ([17]), for example,
considers the Web as corpus and warns against the many pitfalls of Internet searches in the
tourism field and in other sectors. In particular, she suggests ways to retrieve reliable documents
and materials. Durán Muñoz ([12]) discusses how corpora have become indispensable when
tackling the language of tourism and develops reference comparable corpora for translations from
Spanish into German and vice-versa. In her opinion, it is possible to overcome the existing lack
of language resources in this way. Gandin ([16]) advocates the importance of corpus linguistics
applied to translation training and practice, and reports the benefits of consulting parallel and
monolingual corpora for tourism translations. [18] (2019 and 2020) explains how an ad hoc
corpus can help students of Translation Studies find acceptable equivalences. She argues that ad
hoc corpora reduce mistranslations in the case of tourism texts describing nature or adventurous
walks. Turci and Aragrande ([39]) present a pilot study on the corpus-based translation (from
Italian into English) of texts dedicated to heritage tourism. In their study, they highlight the
benefit of corpus linguistics applied to ESP (English for Specific Purposes).


       Machine Translation
Machine translation (MT) is a process whereby computers replace humans and translate texts
automatically. Less than a decade ago, MT was still not qualitatively reliable (see, for example,
the harsh remarks on MT by Pierini [30], 99). Owing to rapid developments in technology,
however, MT has now become widespread in many sectors and fields ([15]). It has performed


                                               122
               P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



increasingly better and has been applied in many sectors, including tourism (see [11]). Rivera-
Trigueros ([32]), for example, focuses on the English-Spanish language combination and claims
that of all the MT programmes available, Google Translate has become the most used. On the
other hand, Roig Allué ([33]) laments the many lexico-grammatical and syntactic shortcomings
of Google Translate when tackling the English and Spanish language combination in the tourism
field. However, these apparently different perspectives might be considered consistent with one
another. Several scholars have, in fact, highlighted the importance of human intervention in MT
for quality control purposes ([4]). Stewart ([37]), for example, remarks that MT cannot always
be relied upon, especially with regard to collocations. As dictionaries do not provide a wide
range of collocations, a certain amount of assistance is necessary in order to enhance translation
quality. Hence, he posits that consulting sector-specific corpora can help identify collocations
and tackle MT issues. Nonetheless, users must be trained to distinguish between word meanings
and to recognize relevant and non-relevant usage. His final advice is to focus and rely upon the
users’ language intuition, especially in tourism texts, where “persuasiveness is a defining feature of
the discourse” ([37], 128). As for the use of dictionaries in tourism translation training, general
(bilingual) dictionaries together with corpora (or the Web as corpus) have been advocated by
some scholars (see [36]) as a way of teaching students how to tackle tourism texts using tools
that are easily accessible. Furthermore, they provide a general approach to the language that
students must further elaborate (see [17]). Alternative language resources could be domain-
specific terminographic resources (e.g., YourTerm CULT within the framework of the European
project Terminology without Borders).



       Research question

Given the latest developments in MT and the asserted usefulness of corpora, this paper is aimed
at exploring to what extent the machine translation of tourism texts (from Italian into English)
is reliable and qualitatively satisfactory. To do so, the machine-translations of a variety of tourism
texts are compared with the corpus-based translations into English of the same source texts.
The research questions that this paper wishes to pose are, therefore, the following: is MT reliable
in the tourism field? To what extent can it be considered qualitatively satisfactory vis-à-vis corpus-
based translation?



       Methodology

In order to investigate the reliability and quality of MT in the tourism field, a few texts translated
automatically from Italian into English by Google Translate are compared with the corpus-based
translations of the same source texts.
The original texts and the related corpus-assisted translations are sourced from the work by [20]
(2021), where a variety of genres are dealt with. In particular, this paper evaluates the translation
quality of five tourism texts dealing with the following topics: the description of a beach resort; a
city train tour; a nature walk; tourism trends and rules for urban tourism. The genres addressed


                                                123
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



are varied, and different writing strategies and styles might be expected. The five texts mentioned
above are selected on the basis of an in-depth language analysis carried out in the book by [20]
(2021), as well as on the basis of the excellent results obtained through corpus analysis. Moreover,
the varied types and genres of the texts analysed are arguably sufficient to generalise the findings,
at least as an initial study.
This paper, then, seeks to verify whether the machine translation of the five source texts might be
equally satisfying. To this end, it explores not only the lexical and grammatical choices but also the
persuasive techniques, the clause structures, the ego-targeting strategies and other writing devices.



       Analysis

The first text to analyse is the description of a beach resort. Table 1 shows the source text (ST),
the MT, and the corpus-based translation (CbT) of the source text. The source text and the
translations are divided into sections in order to allow comparisons.
The corpus-assisted translation was carried out by consulting the Leeds Collection of Internet Corpora
([40]) and the Hoepli online bilingual dictionary (see [20] 2021, 155-65). Differences between the
CbT and the MT are underlined and discussed at the bottom.

No. ST                                  Google MT of ST                CbT of ST
1   LIDO SABBIADORO                     LIDO SABBIADORO                LIDO SABBIADORO
       Situato sul litorale più         Located on the most            Lido Sabbiadoro is located
       suggestivo    della      costa   suggestive coast of the        along the picturesque coast
       barese, il Capitolo, il nostro   Bari coast, the Capitolo,      of the city of Bari named Il
       stabilimento balneare è          our bathing establishment      Capitolo.
       immerso in un paesaggio          is immersed in a timeless
                                                                       Our beach resort is surrounded
       senza tempo: la Costa degli      landscape: the Costa degli
                                                                       by the stunning landscape
       Ulivi.                           Ulivi.
                                                                       of Costa degli Ulivi where
                                                                       olive trees thrive in a timeless
                                                                       atmosphere.
2      Questo lembo meridionale         This southern strip of Italy   This strip of land in the South of
       d’Italia accompagna ogni         accompanies every traveler     Italy will take you on a colourful
       viaggiatore in un percorso       on a path made of colors       and fascinating journey across
       fatto di colori e suggestioni    and suggestions with a         the Mediterranean Sea to
       dall’anima mediterranea,         Mediterranean soul, which      golden sandy beaches and the
       che culmina in spiagge           culminates in sandy and        clearest sea water.
       sabbiose e dorate ed un          golden beaches and a clear
       mare limpido e cristallino.      and crystalline sea.
                                               Table 1
                       The ST, MT and CbT of the description of a beach resort
                   ST sourced and abridged from: https://www.sabbiadorobeach.com/


Note that the machine-translated text presents not only lexical issues but also a certain disregard


                                                   124
                P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



for collocations, not to mention the writing strategies, pertaining to the language of tourism in
English.
Lexical issues include, for example, the following: “suggestive” (translating suggestivo) and
“bathing establishment” (translating stabilimento balneare) in line 1, and “suggestions”
(translating suggestioni) on line 2. As for the modifier “suggestive”, the literature has discussed this
frequently mistaken word at length (see [17], 93-5) and has proposed valid equivalences, such as
“spectacular” or “breathtaking”. The CbT, for instance, proposes “picturesque”. This translation
option might be considered satisfying, to a certain extent, although the terms proposed in the
literature may seem more appropriate. Also, (un percorso fatto di...) suggestioni is figurative and
rendered as “fascinating (journey)” in the CbT, in contrast to the MT’s more literal “(a path
made of …) suggestions”.
In the Table 1 above, there are also collocational shortcomings. For example, it seems improbable
that a beach resort can actually be “immersed” in a “timeless landscape” (first line). In fact, if the
phrase “immersed in a timeless landscape” is googled, only 9 hits are retrieved and these are mainly
from Italian websites. Collocations, of course, are not established simply by their frequency of
appearance on a Google results page; it could be argued that “immersed” does not frequently
collocate with “timeless landscape” in a native English context. The CbT proposes the phrase
“surrounded by a stunning landscape”. Another collocational issue is apparent in the expression
“a path (…) which culminates” (second line). If the phrase “path * culminating|culminates” is
googled, webpages dealing with spiritual healing, enlightenment and Buddhism come to the fore,
raising the question of whether this expression may be deemed appropriate in a text describing a
beach resort. The CbT proposes “(this strip of land) will take you to”, which is more in keeping
with the less figurative English writing style. The CbT also divides the long sentence of the first
line into two shorter sentences, which is more typical of English clause structures.
In line two, there are some other figurative expressions that are translated literally, such as “a
path made of colors” (which is rendered as “a colourful... journey” in the CbT) and “with a
Mediterranean soul” (toned down to “across the Mediterranean Sea” in the CbT). It can be
argued that moderating vivid expressions, as the CbT does, is more in line with the English
writing style.
Finally, the CbT takes ego-targeting into account and proposes “will take you (on a ... journey)”
to translate accompagna ogni viaggiatore (in un percorso). On the contrary, the MT suggests the
more literal “accompanies every traveller (on a path)”, neglecting the ego-targeting strategies of
English tourism language.
The next text to be analysed concerns a city train tour. Table 2 reports the ST and the related
MT and CbT. The corpus-assisted translation was effected using the Web as corpus and Google
advanced search techniques. The Cambridge monolingual online dictionary was also consulted
(see [20], 143-7). The texts are divided into sections and the MT’s shortcomings are underlined
in order to make the analysis clearer.




                                                 125
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



No.     ST                            Google MT of ST                   CbT of ST
1       Il trenino turistico          The Explorer tourist train is     The Explorer tourist train is the
        Explorer è il modo ideale     the ideal way for everyone,       best way to look around and
        per tutti, dai più grandi     from the largest to the           discover the city in an interesting
        ai più piccoli per visitare   smallest, to visit and discover   and amusing way.
        e scoprire la città in        the city in a completely new
                                                                        It’s for everyone – from the
        modo del tutto nuovo e        and fun way.
                                                                        youngest to the oldest.
        divertente.
2       Comodamente         seduti    Comfortably seated on             You will be comfortably seated
        sul fantastico trenino e      the fantastic train and           in the sightseeing tourist train,
        accompagnati da una           accompanied by a clear and        and accompanied by an audio
        chiara e completa audio       complete audio guide in           guide in Italian and English.
        guida in italiano ed          Italian and English.
        inglese.
                                              Table 2
                   The ST, MT and CbT of the description of a tourist train city tour
                      ST sourced and abridged from: https://senigalliaexplorer.it/


One of the first things that stands out in the first line of Table 2 above, is the fact that the long
sentence of the ST is split into two in the CbT, where the phrases are better organised. They have,
in fact, a subject, a verb and an object. There are no subordinate clauses or embeddings which
would make the discourse somewhat intricate. It is evident that the MT does not comply with
these writing techniques. In addition, there are collocational issues in the first line, such as the
expression “from the largest to the smallest”, which should render dai più grandi ai più piccoli.
The meaning of the source phrase is actually “from the youngest to the oldest”, as evidenced in
the CbT. In the second line, there are also clause structure issues. The fronting of the adverbial
phrase “comfortably seated” makes the MT rather awkward in an English-speaking context.
As the literature remarks, such constructions should be avoided in the English language ([20],
21-2). The CbT, in fact, proposes a standard subject + verb construction at the beginning of the
sentence.
The next text describes a nature walk. Table 3 reports the ST, the MT and the CbT. The corpus-
assisted translation was carried out by consulting an ad hoc corpus (see [20], 2021, 213-23). MT
shortcomings are underlined.




                                                    126
                P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



No.     ST                           Google MT of ST                     CbT of ST
1       Partenza dall'ingresso       Departure from the main             The trail starts from the main
        principale del Parco         entrance of the Parco della         entrance of the Parco della
        della Chiusa.                Chiusa.                             Chiusa.
2       In questo primo tratto       In this first section it is worth   On this stretch, you will note
        è da segnalare Villa         mentioning Villa Sampieri           Villa Sampieri Talon, currently
        Sampieri Talon, ora          Talon, now the subject of           undergoing repair.
        oggetto di lavori di         maintenance works.
        manutenzione.
3       Proseguendo          oltre   Continuing further we enter         Follow the narrow path through
        ci si addentra tra la        the vegetation through a            the wood (Sentiero delle
        vegetazione attraverso       narrow path (“Sentiero              Montagnole).
        uno stretto sentiero         delle Montagnole”), which,
                                                                         The path curves around and
        (“Sentiero          delle    describing an arch, takes
                                                                         climbs up to reach the top of the
        Montagnole”),        che,    us to the top of the grassy
                                                                         plateau.
        descrivendo un arco, ci      plateau and shortly after to
        porta sulla sommità del      Montagnola di Sopra, seat of        After a short distance, you reach
        pianoro erboso e poco        the Park.                           Montagnola di Sopra, the Park
        dopo alla Montagnola di                                          Headquarters.
        Sopra, sede del Parco.
                                               Table 3
                       The ST, MT and CbT of the description of a nature walk
                       ST sourced and abridged from: http://www.trackguru.net/


The first line in Table 3 above is interesting as the MT, as expected, provides a literal translation.
In a similar way to the previous text, the machine-translated sentence starts with infrequent
fronting (i.e., “departure from”). The CbT, by contrast, re-phrases the source text by placing a
subject and a verb at the beginning of the sentence (“the trail starts”). The second line of the MT
presents lexical issues, since the phrase “now the subject of (maintenance works)” is a mistake.
In fact, if “the subject of maintenance works” is googled, very few hits are obtained, and mainly
in non-English (or non-American) domains. However, it could be argued that “currently under
maintenance” is more frequent than “currently undergoing repair”. In fact, if the expressions
“currently under maintenance” site:.gov.uk and “currently undergoing repair” site:.gov.uk are googled,
more hits are obtained in the first search. The same results are obtained if the US Government’s
domain is queried (command: site:.gov). The commands site:.gov.uk and site:.gov help obtain
results only from the British and North American Government’s domains, respectively.
The third line is relevant for many reasons. Firstly, the MT sentence starts (again) with an
infrequent gerund (“continuing further”). Moreover, the automatic translation system proposes
the use of the first plural person pronoun (“we”, “us”) to render the impersonal “si” and the
atonic pronoun “ci”. In these cases, as suggested by the literature, ego-targeting or the imperative
should have been applied ([7];[31];[20], 23). The CbT, in fact, proposes either an imperative
(“follow”) or the second person pronoun (“you”).
The MT presents other lexical shortcomings, such as the word “vegetation” to translate vegetazione
(which is best rendered in the CbT as “the wood”), and the “seat of the Park”, which wrongly


                                                    127
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



translates sede del Parco. In this case, the correct words to use are “Park Headquarters” (see Author
1 2019, 17-9).
Finally, the MT makes a serious mistake by translating the figurative and idiomatic expression
descrivendo un arco literally. The CbT, on the other hand, renders its meaning effectively with the
phrase “curves around and climbs up” (see also [18], 16-7).
Finally, the CbT divides the long text of line three into three sentences in order to comply with
English writing standards by making shorter, simpler phrases.
The next text deals with trends in the tourism sector. Table 4 reports the ST, the MT and the
CbT. The corpus-assisted translation was carried out by consulting an ad hoc corpus (see [20],
234-44).

No.      ST                               Google MT of ST                   CbT of ST
1        Nel 2018, l’Italia ha            In 2018, Italy reached an all-    In 2018, Italy achieved a
         raggiunto il record storico di   time high of over 428 million     new record of 428 million
         oltre 428 milioni di turisti     tourists (+ 1.8% compared to      tourists (+1.8% compared
         (+1,8% rispetto al 2017).        2017).                            with 2017).
2        Le attività economiche           The economic activities related   The annual report of the
         connesse       a       questo    to this sector, underlines        Italian National Institute
         comparto, sottolinea il          the Istat Annual Report           of      Statistics   (Istat)
         Rapporto annuale Istat           published today, generate         published today remarks
         pubblicato oggi, generano        6% of the added value of the      that economic activities
         il 6% del valore aggiunto        economy: a similar share to       related to tourism account
         dell’economia: una quota         the construction sector.          for 6% of the value added
         simile al comparto delle                                           of the economy – a similar
         costruzioni.                                                       percentage is noticed for
                                                                            the building sector.
                                              Table 4
                      The ST, MT and CbT of the description of tourism trends
                     ST sourced and abridged from: https://www.ilsole24ore.com


It is remarkable that there are no lexical, grammatical or collocational issues in the MT in Table
4 above. The only noticeable shortcoming concerns the acronym “Istat” which should have been
explained by a descriptive term ([27], 148), as in the CbT.
The same results are obtained in the last text, which is an extract from a journal article focusing
on new tourism regulations in the city of Amsterdam.




                                                   128
               P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



No.       ST                                 Google MT of ST               CbT of ST
1         La sindaca di Amsterdam            Amsterdam mayor Femke         Amsterdam Mayor Femke
          Femke        Halsema         sta   Halsema is considering        Halsema is assessing the
          valutando la possibilità di        banning tourists enter the    possibility of prohibiting
          vietare ai turisti l'ingresso ai   city's coffeeshops and red-   tourists from entering coffee
          coffeeshop e ai locali a luci      light bars.                   shops and red light district
          rosse della città.                                               bars.
2         Questa iniziativa avrebbe          This initiative would have    This initiative is aimed at
          l'obiettivo di contrastare i       the aim of combating          curbing aggressive behaviour
          comportamenti molesti e di         harassing behavior and        and diverting tourists to
          dirottare il turismo verso         diverting tourism to other    other tourist destinations.
          altre attrazioni.                  attractions.
                                              Table 5
                     The ST, MT and CbT of a journal article on city tourism rules
                      ST sourced and abridged from: https://video.repubblica.it/


Clearly, there are no problems with MT, here. In fact, the MT is well-structured and smooth.
Probably, this is due to the fact that the text is purely informative and the clause structure is
simple. The article, in fact, more closely resembles a statement of fact than a persuasive or
figurative tourism text.
The main differences between the texts in Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3, and those of Table 4 and
Table 5 above can be found in the fact that the former are both descriptive and persuasive. Hence,
the language is more elaborate: a certain amount of figurative language is used; the collocational
and lexical choices are consistent, accurate and relevant, and sentences are longer as they contain
subordinate clauses or embeddings. The latter, by contrast, are merely informative, the clauses are
simpler and neither persuasiveness nor vivid language are involved.
Given the above, it might be deduced that purely informative and descriptive tourism texts
can be successfully translated by MT. One wonders, however, to what extent such texts fully
represent the variety of tourism discourse.



       Discussion

The analyses carried out in this paper highlight the fact that, at present, MT is not particularly
useful or reliable in the tourism sector. Problems remain which MT does not yet address. The
paper has brought to the fore the most relevant, which range from lexical and collocational
shortcomings to writing style issues.
Some examples of lexical shortcomings are “suggestive” to translate suggestivo (CbT: “picturesque”),
or “bathing establishment” to translate stabilimento balneare (CbT: “beach resort”) (Table 1), as
well as “now the subject of (maintenance works)” to render ora oggetto di (lavori di manutenzione)
(CbT: “currently undergoing repair”), and “seat of the Park” to translate sede del Parco (CbT:
“Park Headquarters”) (Table 3).


                                                    129
    Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



Collocational issues include the erroneous selection of language pairs, such as “immersed”
referring to a beach resort and “culminates” describing to a path (Table 1), or “from the largest
to the smallest” when translating dai più grandi ai più piccoli (CbT: “from the youngest to the
oldest”) (Table 2).
Moreover, MT does not take into account the English writing style of tourism discourse, as
it proposes literal translations. Hence, sentences tend to be long with subordinate clauses or
embeddings (like the source texts). For example, the non-defining relative clause in line 4 of
Table 3 is too long: “which, describing an arch, takes to the top of the grassy plateau and shortly
after to Montagnola di Sopra, seat of the Park”. The CbT splits this sentence into three parts to
make the meaning clearer. In this way, the phrases are smoother and easier to follow.
MT is also prone to infrequent fronting. Sometimes there are adverbial phrases at the beginning
of a sentence (e.g., “comfortably seated”, in Table 2); nouns (e.g., “departure from”), or gerunds
(e.g., “continuing”) (both in Table 3) whereas the English language tends to be characterised by
sentences starting with a subject and a verb.
Another writing style issue is ego-targeting. The Italian texts make use of the impersonal si, or
the first plural person. English tourism texts, on the other hand, use the second singular or plural
person “you” and imperatives. This is something that MT obviously has difficulty with (see line
two of Table 1 and line three of Table 3).
Given that MT is mainly characterised by literal translations, it is evident that idiomatic
expressions and figurative descriptions continue to be inadequately expressed. Although “a path
made of colors” might arguably translate un percorso di colori (Table 1), “describing an arch” does
not render the idiomatic descrivendo un arco referring to a path (Table 3).
Purely descriptive tourism texts such as those in Tables 4 and 5, however, are tackled successfully.
The clauses are well-organised and the lexical choices are correct; they do not present any
particular shortcomings, apart from an unaddressed acronym (Table 4). For these reasons, it
could be deduced that MT is reliable as long as the text is merely descriptive. This, however,
would lessen, if not challenge, the nature and raison d’etre of tourism discourse, which is mostly
appellative or euphoric (see [37], 128, in this regard).
Appendix 1 summarises the MT shortcomings presented and discussed above, together with the
source phrases and the related corpus-based translations.



       Conclusions

This paper has sought to explore the reliability and effectiveness of machine translation for the
tourism industry. To this end, a variety of tourism texts were translated automatically from Italian
into English by using Google Translate. The machine translations were then compared with the
corpus-based translations of the source texts.
The analysis exposed several problems in the MT, ranging from lexical and collocational
shortcomings to unaddressed English writing style conventions. Automatically translated
sentences were, in fact, often too long as they merely reflected the source text’s sentence structure.
The same can be said of fronting, where nouns, adverbial phrases and gerunds wrongly appeared


                                                130
                 P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



at the beginning of the sentence. Also, idiomatic expressions and vivid language were rendered
literally, thereby producing inauthentic or awkward language.
Surprisingly, MT performed well with highly descriptive and informative texts, where no issues
were noted (apart from an unaddressed acronym).
In light of the above, it is evident that MT in the tourism field should be employed by experienced
translators, or at least by those who can discern relevant word usages from non-relevant word
usages, as already suggested by the literature ([37]). Hence, it is the opinion of the authors that
MT still has a long way to go before it can be considered completely reliable in the tourism sector.
Therefore, this paper calls for further developments in MT algorithms, which should take into
account collocational uses and/or particular lexical choices characterising specific language pairs.
At present, corpora seem to be the best option for handling tourism texts, as they permit
translators to find and corroborate collocations, samples of language patterns and word usages
in context. For these reasons, corpora should be used as reliable language reference tools, even
when users opt for MT.
The limits of this paper lie in the fact that only two languages were involved. Perhaps, more
insightful results could have been obtained by analysing a greater number. Also, the analyses
concerned only translations from Italian into English, without addressing translations from
English into Italian. Future research might therefore embrace the machine translation of tourism
texts from and into a wider variety of languages. Moreover, further studies may encompass a
greater number of tourism texts, so that these initial findings might be either corroborated or
challenged.



       Appendix 1

                         ST, MT shortcomings, types of shortcoming and CbT
Text Reference ST                          MT                Type of            CbT
                                                             Shortcoming
Table 1 line 1      Suggestivo             Suggestive        Lexical            Picturesque
Table 1 line 1      Stabilimento           Bathing           Lexical            Beach resort
                    balneare               estalishment
Table 1 line 1      Immerso                Immersed          Collocation        Surrounded
Table 1 line 2      Ogni viaggiatore       Every traveler    Writing style:     You
                                                             Ego-targeting
Table 1 line 2      Un percorso fatto di   A path made of    Figurative         A colourful
                    colori                 colors            language           journey
Table 1 line 2      (Un percorso fatto     (A path made of   Lexical +          Fascinating
                    di …) suggestioni      …) suggestions    Figurative         (journey)
                                                             language
Table 1 line 2      Dall'anima             With a            Figurative and     Across the
                    mediterranea           Mediterranean     vivid language     Mediterranean
                                           soul                                 Sea



                                                 131
   Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



Table 1 line 2   (Un percorso …)       (A path …)       Collocation            (A journey across
                 che culmina           which culminates + Figurative           …) to
                                                        language
Table 2 line 1   Dai più grandi ai     From the largest Collocation            From the
                 più piccoli           to the smallest                         youngest to the
                                                                               oldest
Table 2 line 2   Comodamente           Comfortably         Writing style:      You will be
                 seduti                seated              Fronting            comfortably
                                                                               seated
Table 3 line 1   Partenza da           Departure from      Writing style:      The trail starts
                                                           Fronting            from
Table 3 line 2   Ora oggetto           Now the subject     Lexical             Currently
                 di (lavori di         of (maintenance                         (undergoing
                 manutenzione)         works)                                  repair)
Table 3 line 3   Proseguendo oltre     Continuing          Writing style:      Follow
                                       further             Fronting
Table 3 line 3   Ci si addentra        We enter            Writing style:      (Follow ….)
                                                           Ego-targeting       through
Table 3 line 3   La vegetazione        The vegetation      Lexical             The wood
Table 3 line 3   Descrivendo un        Describing an       Figurative          (The path) curves
                 arco                  arch                language            around and
                                                                               climbs up
Table 3 line 3   Ci porta              Takes us            Writing style:      You reach
                                                           Ego-targeting
Table 3 line 3   Sede del Parco        Seat of the Park    Lexical             Park
                                                                               Headquarters
Table 4 line 1   Istat                 Istat               Lexical             Italian National
                                                                               Institute of
                                                                               Statistics (Istat)



      References

      [1].         Agorni, Mirella. 2012. “Introduzione”. In Prospettive linguistiche e traduttolo-
      giche negli studi sul turismo, edited by Mirella Agorni, 7-21. Milan: Franco Angeli.
      [2].       Agorni, Mirella. 2018. “Cultural Representation Through Translation: an In-
      sider-Outsider Perspective on the Translation of Tourism Promotional Discourse.” Altre
      Modernità 20 (11): 253-275.
      [3].       Baker, Mona. 1992. In Other Words. New York: Routledge.
      [4].       Chan, Sin-wai. 2018. The Human Factor in Machine Translation. New York:
      Routledge.
      [5].         Cesiri, Daniela. 2017. “Representing Venice’s Local Culture to International
      Tourists - The Use of the ‘Languaging’ Technique in Websites in English.” Annali di Ca’
      Foscari. Serie occidentale 51: 195-216.


                                               132
        P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



[6].        Cómitre Narváez, Isabel and José María Valverde Zambrana. 2014. “How
to translate culture-specific items: a case study of tourist promotion campaign by Ture-
spaña.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 21: 71-112.
[7].     Dann, Graham. 1996. The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective.
Oxon: CAB international.
[8].       Diki-Kidiri, Marcel. 2000. “Une approche culturelle de la terminologie.” Ter-
minologies Nouvelles (21): 27-31.
[9].        Diki-Kidiri, Marcel. 2008. Le vocabulaire scientifique dans les langues africai-
nes. Pour une approche culturelle de la terminologie. Paris: Karthala.
[10].     Diki-Kidiri, Marcel. 2022. “Cultural Terminology.” In Theoretical Perspectives
on Terminology: Explaining terms, concepts and specialized knowledge, edited by Pamela
Faber and Marie-Claude L’Homme, 197-216. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[11].      Dimitroulia, Titika. 2022. The use of eTranslation in the tourism industry. Ac-
cessed June 28, 2022. https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/emt/the-use-of-etranslation-in-the-tou-
rism-industry/
[12].      Durán Muñoz, Isabel. 2010. “A Corpus-based Ontoterminological Tool for
Tourist Translations.” International Journal of Translation 22 (1-2): 149-165.
[13].       Durán Muñoz, Isabel. 2012. “Analysing common mistakes in translations of
tourist texts (Spanish, English and German).” OnOmázein 26 (2): 335-349.
[14].      Fijo León, María I. & Fuentes Luque, Adrían. 2013. “A Corpus-based Appro-
ach to the Compilation, Analysis, and Translation of Rural Tourism Terms.” Meta 58 (1):
212–226. https://doi.org/10.7202/1023817ar
[15].       Gambier, Yves. 2016. “Rapid and Radical Changes in Translation and Tran-
slation Studies.” International Journal of Communication 10: 887–906.
[16].     Gandin, Stefania. 2016. “Teaching and learning the language of tourism as
an LSP: corpus-based approaches.” In New Insights into Corpora and Translation, edited
by Daniel Gallego-Hernández, 93-110. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pu-
blishing.
[17].      Gatto, Maristella. 2008. From body to Web. Bari: Laterza.
[18].       Giampieri, Patrizia. 2019. Corpus-based translation in the tourism sector: a case
study with final year bachelor students, mediAzioni 24: 1-32.
[19].       Giampieri, Patrizia. 2020. Volcanic experiences: comparing non-corpus-based
translations with corpus-based translations in translation training, Perspectives 29 (1): 46-
63. DOI:10.1080/0907676X.2019.1705361
[20].        Giampieri, Patrizia and Harper, Martin. 2021. Tourism Translation: from di-
ctionary to corpus. Brienza: Le Penseur.
[21].       Hansen, Gyde. 2009. “A classification of errors in translation and revision.”
In CIUTI-Forum 2008: Enhancing Translation Quality: Ways, Means, Methods, edited by
Martin Forstner, Hannelore Lee-Jahnke and Peter A. Schmitt, 313-326. Bern/Berlin:
Peter Lang.
[22].     Jaworska, Sylvia. 2017. “Metaphors we travel by: a corpus-assisted study of
metaphors in promotional tourism discourse.” Metaphor and Symbol 32 (3): 161-177.



                                        133
Umanistica Digitale – ISSN: 2532-8816 – n. 14, 2022



  [23].      Laviosa Sara and Valerie Cleverton. 2006. “Learning by Translating: A Con-
  trastive Methodology for ESP Learning and Translation.” Scripta Manent 2 (1): 3-12.
  [24].        Lorente, Mercè, Martínez-Salom, Àngels, Santamaría, Isabel and Vargas-Sier-
  rra Chelo. 2016. “Specialized collocations in specialized dictionaries.” In Collocations and
  other lexical combinations in Spanish, edited by Sergi Torner Castells and Elisenda Bernal
  Gallen, 200-222. New York / London: Routledge.
  [25].     Maci, Stefania M. 2019. “‘The church was built on a basilica plan.’ Transla-
  ting and mistranslating Italian churches’ panels.” Altre Modernità 21: 140-157.
  [26].      Malenkina, Nadezhda and Ivanov, Stanislav. 2018. “A Linguistic Analysis of
  the Official Tourism Websites of the Seventeen Spanish Autonomous Communities”.
  Journal of Destination Marketing & Management 9: 204-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
  jdmm.2018.01.007
  [27].      Newmark, Peter. 1988. A textbook of translation. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall.
  [28].       Pecman, Mojca. 2012. “Etude lexicographique et discursive des collocations
  en vue de leur intégration dans une base de données terminologiques.” The Journal of
  Specialised Translation 18: 113-138.
  [29].       Pecman, Mojca and Kübler, Natalie. 2022. Text genres and Terminology. In
  Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology – Explaining terms, concepts and specialized know-
  ledge, edited by Pamela Faber and Marie-Claude L’Homme, 263-290. Amsterdam: John
  Benjamins.
  [30].     Pierini, Patrizia. 2007. “Quality in Web Translation: An Investigation into
  UK and Italian Tourism Web Sites.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 8: 85-103.
  [31].        Pierini, Patrizia. 2008. “A warm welcome. Guaranteed. Aspetti dell’Inglese nei
  siti degli Enti Nazionali per il Turismo.” Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 6: 163-202.
  [32].      Rivera-Trigueros, Irene. 2021. “Machine translation systems and quality asses-
  sment: a systematic review.” Language Resources and Evaluation. https://doi.org/10.1007/
  s10579-021-09537-5
  [33].        Roig Allué, Blanca. 2017. “The Reliability And Limitations Of Google Tran-
  slate: A Bilingual, Bidirectional And Genre-Based Evaluation.” Entreculturas 9: 67-80.
  [34].       Sanning, He. 2010. “Lost and Found in Translating Tourist Texts Domesti-
  cating, Foreignising or Neutralising Approach.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 13:
  124-137.
  [35].       Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus concordance collocation. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
  sity Press.
  [36].      Stewart, Dominic. 2012. Translating Tourist Texts from Italian to English as a
  Foreign Language. Naples: Liguori.
  [37].      Stewart, Dominic. 2019. “English for tourism in the non-native English
  classroom. Machine translation and corpora.” In Teaching English for Tourism: Bridging
  Research and Praxis, edited by Michael Ennis and Gina Petrie, 114-130. Abingdon: Rout-
  ledge.
  [38].       Sumberg, Carolyn. 2004. “Brand leadership at stake: Selling France to British
  tourists.” The Translator 10 (2): 329–353.
  [39].      Turci, Monica and Gaia Aragrande. 2020. “On Translating Art and Heritage


                                         134
        P. Giampieri –Tourism Translation: from Corpus to Machine Translation (and back)



Discourse from Italian into English: From a Learner Corpus to a Specialized Corpus.” In
The Language of Art and Cultural Heritage, edited by Ana Pano Alamán and Valeria Zotti,
12-38. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing.
[40].      Wilson, James, Anthony Hartley, Serge Sharoff and Paul Stephenson. 2010.
“Advanced corpus solutions for humanities researchers.” In Proceedings of the 24th Pacific
Asian Conference on Language, Computation and Information, 769-778. http://anthology.
aclweb.org/Y/Y10/Y10-1089.pdf



Online resources

[41].      Cambridge monolingual dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org
[42].      Hoepli bilingual dictionary: https://www.dizionari.repubblica.it
[43].      Leeds: http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/internet.html
[44].      YourTerm CULT: https://yourterm.eu/yourterm-cult/ Occumque cori abore-
rio quistrum explabo ratatec aborum fugit aut hari ilitas santur soluptia si voluptio vella
comnit eossequatem etur?




                                       135
