Translating Tourist Landscape in Jordan Cities: Application and Implication

This study examines the process of Arabic to English bilingual tourist sign translation in the Jordanian context, and specifically in the area of Jerash, Umm Qais and the Dead Sea. It discusses the nature of the translation errors; the translation strategies used and offers suggested solutions to the translation errors. The analysis of a corpus of 150 bilingual tourist signs employed Zhang & Xu, (2015)‘s taxonomy of translation errors and Baker (1992) theory of equivalence. Analysis is done both quantitatively and qualitatively. The result shows that lexical error is the most common error type, followed by pragmatic and syntactic errors. The study also uncovers the dominant translation strategies in use and offers alternatives to them on the basis of the different levels of equivalence. The study makes practical suggestions for both translators and tourism authorities to facilitate bilingual tourist signage in Jordan and boost tourists’ linguistic and cultural experience.