The Projection of Tourist Destination Image Through Translation: A Multilingual and Qualitative Analysis

This investigation identifies the unique attributes and attributive values of eleven Spanish cities promoted by Turespaña, the public body attached to the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Tourism. Using qualitative data analysis (QDA), the authors extract linguistic units of meaning, known as UAs - from a set of tourist brochures in multiple languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian). The investigation explores the projected Tourist Destination Image (pro-TDI) from the translatological Skopostheorie in the context of tourism promotion and marketing. Translation is a purposeful strategy for promoting destinations for a diversity of international visitors. The research provides evidence of source-oriented translations according to the various unique attributes, with the highest attributive values recorded for Granada and Cordoba ( with the exception of Russian). The multilingual unique attributes collected from the QDA serve to reaffirm the premise of tourist destinations as mythical places. The study offers insights for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) regarding the importance of translation as a tourist mediation due to the interrelationships between language, culture, and tourist promotion.