Title: (Re)viewing Cannibal Tours: lost in translation

Authors: Peter Burns; Konstantina Zafiri

Addresses: Centre for Tourism Policy Studies, University of Brighton, Darley Road, Eastbourne BN20 7UR, UK. ' Centre for Tourism Policy Studies, University of Brighton, Darley Road, Eastbourne BN20 7UR, UK

Abstract: The film Cannibal Tours powerfully portrays the impact of tourism in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea through an array of host-guest encounters. Using text from the film as data, the present paper reveals new insights through a close analysis of the English subtitles given as translation for the Italian and German tourists. The subtitles are examined at three levels of equivalence to establish translation strategy and impact. The whole text is also be submitted to analysis using the critical discourse analysis (CDA) method. The findings have far-reaching implications on several levels. First, they are insightful for the study of tourism in developing destinations. Second, they confirm the significance of using visual data for research in the social sciences. Third, they demonstrate that translation in films can impact heavily on film meaning-making and viewer perception.

Keywords: Cannibal Tours; English subtitles; film subtitles; translations; Italian tourists; German tourists; postcolonial; host-guest encounters; visual evidence; critical discourse analysis; CDA; Papa New Guinea; PNG; tourism impact; tourist-host interaction; host communities; tourist destinations; film meanings; viewer perceptions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2012.050759

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2012 Vol.2 No.3, pp.243 - 264

Received: 04 Nov 2011
Accepted: 07 Jul 2012
Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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