Bridging cultures: Tourism and the art of translation

In this paper we deal with the linguistic and cultural elements of tourist texts and the techniques of translating them by giving some examples of texts introducing a number of tourist attractions in Iran. Domesticating and foreignising strategies are popular in translation studies and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages in translating tourist texts. The advantages for domesticating include maintaining the terseness of the text, obtaining the reader's understanding of the translated text and gaining the interest of the reader. Its biggest weakness is that the cultural and historical elements of the original could be lost in translation. The advantages for foreignising are revealing the cultural and historical factors of the Source Text (ST), and disseminating the culture and customs of the original. Its disadvantages are neglecting the reader's understanding, and the function of attracting the tourists may be lost. This paper argues that neither of them can solve all the problems associated with preparing tourist texts and materials and even translating them from Persian (The language spoken in Iran) to English. The major focus of this paper is to find a new strategy for translating tourist texts that can highlight and introduce Iranian culture to the target audience and keep Iranian culture intact. To do so, a number of tourist attractions of Iran including some well-known historical places, natural sights, old and modern traditions, etc. is introduced and taken as model for our analysis.