Translating the tourist gaze: from heritage and ‘culture’ to actual encounter

Abstract

This paper covers two main areas. The fi rst area is an analysis of the various facets of heritage, cultural tourism and tourist encounter with other cultures in terms of culture-bound tourist gaze, a simplifi ed, generalised and necessarily distorted model of ‘the Other’. The model of perception is culture itself, and is discussed in terms of 3 macro levels: heritage; the practices and traditions of a people; and the system of internal values and beliefs that both form the model of reality and guide it. Secondly, the paper focuses on translation and Outsider interpretation. It reveals how little emphasis is given either to translator language or to cultural competence, and focuses on the problems of mediating for the culture-bound tourist gaze.

Keywords

• heritage
• tourism
• culture
• intercultural communication
• translation
• Euro-Mediterranean