Does commissioning process matter? Understanding translation quality with a case of tourism promotional texts

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on how translation commissioning process relates to the level of the quality of translation set within the context of tourism promotional text translation. Translation quality has been one of the main concerns in the translation of tourism promotional materials. The translation of tourism promotional materials is necessary because they serve as a bridge of communication between visitors and a destination they consider visiting. Therefore, a high quality of translation is essential to create a full understanding of the visitors. Studies on the role of commissioning process have, however, remained limited. The analysis is based on two data; interview and corpus analysis. The interview involved six tourism professionals at the tourism board participating in the commissioning process. The corpus analysis examines six tourism brochures and their translation to consider the quality of the translation as the outcome of the commissioning process. The discussion of the paper focuses on the commissioning process by looking at how the tourism professional understand the purpose of the translation, the translator’s selection procedure, the translation brief and quality assurance. The translation of tourism texts are then examined to find out the extent to which the commissioning procedure has influenced the quality of the translations. The paper argues that the commissioning process is inadequate and that has significantly affected the level of quality of the translation that has been commissioned by the Tourism Board in Gorontalo.