Four Tips for Tourism Translation in a Globalized Age

Tourism translation allows travel agencies, tour operators, hotels and other businesses to reach out to potential customers around the world. From websites to brochures, magazine advertisements and more, there are many ways for tourism-related businesses to promote themselves. By translating these materials into multiple languages, tourism businesses can ensure that they reach as many potential customers as possible.

For maximum effect, however, tourism businesses can’t rely on any basic translation – they must be able to present their material in a clear, comprehensive and attention-catching manner. These four tips reveal what makes a world-class tourism translation.

1. Use Accessible Language

Tourism translation is unique from many other specialty fields of translation because it does not require an in-depth knowledge of complex technical terms unintelligible to the average Joe.

So you’d think that tourism translation would be a cinch, right? Wrong.

In order to present an accessible and friendly message, tourism texts often employ colloquial terms, everyday language that you might hear spoken on the street. Excellent tourism translation therefore requires an intimate understanding of the nuances of both the source and target languages at a native-speaker level.

For example, imagine trying to translate the terms “average Joe” and “a cinch,” as used above. There’s no doubt that a literal translation would result in a pretty confusing message! Tourism translation often employs casual speech like this. Accredited Language Services offers tourism translation by linguistic professionals who are experts in both their source and target languages in more than 150 languages.

2. Add Marketing Flair

In addition to successfully conveying the message of the text itself, a great tourism translation also effectively translates the marketing flair that you’ll find in any tourism industry advertisement, be it a hotel website or museum brochure.

This requires translators who not only can effectively translate these documents, but also have a way with words and are able to create attention-getting translations that stay true to the message of the original text.

3. Remember the Target Audience

Attention-getting tourism translation also requires linguists to localize for a target audience. The tone and style of text aimed at English-speakers may be totally different from that of a text aimed at Japanese, German or French speakers, for instance.

For example, making the appropriate differentiation between the formal German “Sie” vs. the informal “du” is a hugely important linguistic and social aspect in a German translation — a distinction that is totally irrelevant in English. For this reason, translators should be familiar with the cultural norms associated with the languages they work with.

4. Don’t Neglect Details

Finally, tourism translation is especially challenging due to the huge amount of fine details that need to be kept in mind, in addition to the basic translation of text. For customer convenience, a hotel website may want to include prices in different currencies, for example. It may be up to the translator to make these changes.

Tourism translation experts know that conveying all these important details is an essential part of the translation process. Add to this the delicate translation of colloquial terms, demand for marketing flair, and the need to localize for target audiences, and there’s no doubt that tourism translation is a lot trickier than it first seems.