Translating cultural elements for tourism: the case of an Indonesian–English guidebook for tourist guides
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2026.e110452Palavras-chave:
Dayak, indigenous, Indonesia, tourism, cultural mediatorResumo
As professional mediators representing tourist destinations, tourist guides often require reliable resources to communicate local and indigenous heritage to international visitors. However, compared to materials for general tourists (e.g., brochures, travel guidebooks), resources designed specifically for tourist guides remain limited, particularly bilingual materials that can support their linguistic and cultural mediation needs. This study examines the Pocket Guide Book for Tour Guides: Lamandau (PGBFTG), a bilingual Indonesian–English resource designed to equip tourist guides with standardized information about tourism attractions in Lamandau, Central Kalimantan. By applying anthropological and quantitative translation analysis frameworks, it identifies and categorizes 186 Dayak Tomun cultural references and investigates the translation procedures employed to understand how these choices potentially shape tourist guides' representation of Dayak culture for international visitors. The results reveal that translation procedures vary across cultural categories: references to material culture, religious rituals, and social customs retain original Dayak terms while providing explanatory information; artistic and knowledge-related references, by contrast, tend to preserve untranslated terms with minimal explicitation; while economic or livelihood-related references are mostly neutralized or replaced with familiar equivalents. Overall, the PGBFTG demonstrates a tendency to retain Dayak cultural references, which may support the visibility and promotion of Dayak culture but may also pose challenges for novice or less culturally familiar tourist guides. The study therefore suggests that supplementary glossaries and cultural mediation training could help tourist guides negotiate the balance between maintaining culturally specific references and ensuring comprehensibility for international visitors.
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