Translator Trainees’ Performance on Arabic–English Promotional Materials

Abstract

Abstract Due to linguistic and cultural variations between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL), the tourism industry may struggle to communicate effectively with tourists from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The translation industry could contribute significantly to the growth of the tourism industry by removing linguistic and cultural barriers, facing those with different cultural and language backgrounds. Given this issue, this study targets 27 postgraduates enrolled in translation training programs at Saudi universities with an average age of M = 27.471 (SD = 4.8319) and examine their performance on inverse translation (Arabic to English). The authors use a translation task, a tourism-based knowledge questionnaire, and a scale of difficulty to gather the data. Findings reveal shortcomings in the postgraduates’ translation of the promotional translation material and adherence to the source text style. The participants’ responses to the questionnaire show a lack of know-what and know-how in tourism translation. Training in tourism translation and the design of tourism translation courses should be based on the interdisciplinary nature of the field in order to adequately prepare translator trainees for the tourism translation industry.