Stereotypy, phraseology and translation in tourist guides

Abstract

Tourist guides are designed to attract the traveller's attention to a given destination and to provide information, especially on the stages of a journey already undertaken. This information, which is both descriptive and prescriptive or practical in nature, but also evaluative, is presented by means of resources typical of artistotelic rhetoric thanks to a hybrid, objective and subjective phraseology, which characterises tourist guides as a stereotypical genre not only in their structure and linguistic expression, but also in their content. This stereotypy is also propagated through translation, which reinforces its character as a prefixed textual genre. This can be seen in the case study of two guides on Japan, DK – Guías visuales and Guía azul, analysed from the point of view of the treatment of the information they provide, the cultural biases they contain and their translation. We will find that the first one, in accordance with the usual travel guides, highlights the positive side of each place. The second, on the other hand, is more in line with the idea of the 19th century "travel book", highlighting differences and perpetuating stereotypes and prejudices.