Description
Approaching the consumer in Russian-English tourism advertising
Melikidou Elina
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’
The study explores English translations of Russian advertising tourism texts with respect to prevailing cultural norms and traditions, revealing aspects of cultural identity, preferred ways of self-representation and ways of approaching the consumer. The data comprise parallel texts of three data subsets (on Nature, Health and Food tourism) unveiling how tourist perception and identity are reshaped in terms of power distance, self-representation, cosmopolitan orientations. Findings show that English strongly restricts the use of the impersonal forms, interpersonal distance and higher formality and widely uses personal pronouns, active verbs, closeness. As a result, the analysis of the data demonstrates that English favours a more active approach to the tourist whereas in the Russian versions a more passive approach dominates. Results indicate that prevailing politeness principles cross-culturally renarrate the prospects of a rewarding travel experience.
