ELF e la promozione turistica online del made in Puglia: esempi di ritestualizzazione del sito web PugliaPromozione

Abstract

Abstract – Today, the promotion of local luxury services worldwide by means of websites, brochures, blogs and social networks has become standard practice especially in the tourism industry, in which tour operators and providers of accommodation facilities inevitably have to make their promotional campaign and services available in a language other than Italian in order for them to be considered and received by a wider audience and attract as many tourists as possible. Over the years, for several reasons, this language has proven to be English (Crystal 2003); notwithstanding this, in many cases the “effective” translation has turned out to be a merely literal transposition of Italian concepts and terminology into English, where the socio-cultural schemata (Carrell 1983) of the target audience have not been properly taken into consideration. The National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT) reports an increase in tourism fluxes across Italy in 2015, with Puglia displaying an increase by 10% if compared to data in 2014 (http://www.enit.it/it/studi.html) – which makes it worthwhile to invest in the promotion of the made-in-Puglia brand across the world and likewise attract investors to Puglia as well. The present paper considers the Italian website of PugliaPromozione (www.agenziapugliapromozione.it/portal/home), i.e. the regional tourist board and provider of promotion services in Puglia, and compares it to its English version which is made available online (http://www.agenziapugliapromozione.it/portal/en/home). This website aims to promote, among other things, the made-in-Puglia brand and its peculiarities, including food, wine, art and culture, sport, entertainment as well as traditions and spirituality. By contrasting the English version of the website on the basis of their readability index (i.e. the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease; Kincaid et al. 1975; Flesch 2016) and by adopting a corpus-driven methodology (cf. also Centonze 2016a, 2016b) we shall put emphasis on their weaknesses in terms of accessibility; in addition to this, we shall provide some possible examples of re(con)textualization strategies (Widdowson 2004) in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF; Seidlhofer 2001, Guido 2008) which would enhance the understanding, the readability and the reception on the part of the target audience.