A JOURNEY ACROSS THE INTERLINGUAL
DIFFERENCES IN MULTILINGUAL MUSEUM
COMMUNICATION
THE RED STAR LINE MUSEUM IN ANTWERP: A CASE STUDY OF A
CORPUS OF MUSEUM TEXTS
Aantal woorden: 23.588
Marie Gijsels
Studentennummer: 01604268
Promotor(en): Prof. dr. Lieve Jooken
Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de Master tolken
3 Verklaring i.v.m. auteursrecht
De auteur en de promotor(en) geven de toelating deze studie als geheel voor consultatie beschikbaar te stellen voor persoonlijk gebruik. Elk ander gebruik valt onder de beperkingen van het auteursrecht, in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de verplichting de bron uitdrukkelijk te vermelden bij het aanhalen van gegevens uit deze studie.
4 Preambule
De voorbije weken werden zowel studenten als proffen op de proef gesteld. Lessen werden plots uitsluitend online georganiseerd en medestudenten werden gemist. Ondanks deze moeilijkheden kan ik toch met zekerheid bevestigen dat mijn masterproef niet geleden heeft onder de geldende maatregelen. Zo ben ik op tijd kunnen beginnen aan de redactie van mijn masterproef waardoor ik hem ook tijdig heb kunnen indienen. Het contact met mijn promotor verliep vlekkeloos en werd niet belemmerd door het hele ‘online gebeuren’.
Deze preambule werd in overleg tussen de student en de promotor opgesteld en door beide goedgekeurd.
5 Acknowledgements
The aim of this section is to express my gratitude towards everyone who has somehow contributed to the realisation of this paper which would never have existed if it had not been for their support. Writing a paper is a long and challenging process that can only be completed successfully by the help of a number of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my very great appreciation to Prof. Dr. LieveJooken for her continuous support and patience throughout the writing process. Without her meaningful and punctual feedback, this paper would not have been finished on time.
Secondly, I wish to acknowledge the help provided by my fellow students with whom I discussed possible approaches to this paper’s subject.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my parents, who ensured that I was able to enjoy a university education to begin with, and my sister, who had to endure that I repeatedly complained to her about my education as well.
Lastly, I am grateful for my boyfriend who has never ceased to support me during the writing process of this paper and throughout my entire education.
6 Abstract
Museums play an important role in today’s society as conduits of historical information that helps us to understand the condition of being human. This paper argues that the main way this information is conveyed is through museums texts and their translations. Therefore, the present study examines and defines interlingual differences that exist in the multilingual communication of the Red Star Line Museum (RSLM) in Antwerp, which may negatively affect the text comprehension of foreign language visitors. To analyse the possible differences, a variety of Dutch RSLM texts and their French and English translations were brought together in a corpus. In a first phase, the selected fragments were categorised according to five text genres. Next, a distinction was made of four textual levels at which the differences may occur along with three interconnected communication frameworks on which they may exert influence. The analysis of the fragments showed that multiple and diverse translation shifts occurred in the different text genres and at the various textual levels, including shifts in emphasis, connotation, formality, grammatical tense, sentence length, and modality. Overall, the results suggest that English-speaking visitors will empathise less with the RSL migrants and that they, as well as French-speaking visitors, will return home with deviant information.
7 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...5 Abstract ...6 List of tables ...9 List of abbreviations ...10 1 Introduction ...12
1.1 Understanding the ‘New Museology’ in a multilingual museum setting ...13
1.2 The Red Star Line Museum: a brief overview ...16
1.3 Research question and hypothesis ...18
2 Theoretical framework ...20
2.1 An introduction to museology ...20
2.2 The impact of new museological approaches on the production of museum texts ...22
2.3 Contributions to the study of texts in museums ...24
2.3.1 The conception of museum texts as communication frameworks ... 24
2.3.2 Other contributions ... 27
2.4 Interlingual and intercultural transfers in museum texts ...28
3 Methodological framework ...32
3.1 Defining the notions of interlingual differences and communication ...32
3.2 A social-semiotic approach: communication frameworks of meaning ...34
3.3 Interpretation of the adopted corpus ...40
3.4 The design of the analysis ...41
3.4.1 Categorisation according to text genre ... 41
3.4.2 Categorisation according to translation shift ... 43
3.4.3 Incorporation of communicative frameworks ... 45
4 Analysis ...46 4.1 Reports ...47 4.1.1 Register level ... 47 4.1.2 Textual level ... 48 4.1.3 Grammatical level ... 50 4.1.4 Lexical level ... 52 4.2 Explanations ...54 4.2.1 Textual level ... 55 4.2.2 Grammatical level ... 56
8 4.2.3 Lexical level ... 57 4.3 Activating texts ...58 4.3.1 Register level ... 59 4.3.2 Textual level ... 59 4.3.3 Lexical level ... 61 4.4 Personal narratives ...62 4.4.1 Register level ... 62 4.4.2 Textual level ... 63 4.4.3 Grammatical level ... 64
4.5 Emotive and expressive texts ...65
4.5.1 Register level ... 65
5 Discussion ...66
5.1 Interpretation of the analysis according to Ravelli’s frameworks ...66
5.1.1 The interactional framework ... 67
5.1.2 The representational framework ... 68
5.1.3 The organisational framework... 68
5.2 Interpretation of the analysis according to text genre ...69
5.3 Research limitations ...70
6 Conclusion ...72
Bibliography ...75
Appendix I...79
Appendix II ...81 (Word count main text: 23,588)
9 List of tables
Table 1: A systemic Functional Linguistic model for the analysis of museum texts (p. 36) (adapted from Sonaglio, 2016, in Ravelli, 2006, p. 9)
10 List of abbreviations
en English
ETT English Target Text
ETTs English Target Texts
fr French
FTT French Target Text
FTTs French Target Texts
nl Dutch
RSL Red Star Line
RSLM Red Star Line Museum
SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics
ST Source Text
STs Source Texts
11
Er lag een groote waterplas tusschen beide, waarover schepen voeren, onophoudend, heen en weer. De golven klotsten tusschen de twee werelden en alleen de gedachten gingen soms nog van het eene lang naar ’t andere. Cyriel Buysse Vlaamse schrijver, 1931
Il y avait une grande étendue d’eau entre les deux, que les bateaux parcouraient sans discontinuer d’une
côte à l’autre. Les vagues clapotaient entre les deux mondes et seules les pensées allaient encore parfois
d’un pays vers l’autre. Cyriel Buysse Ecrivain flamand, 1931
A huge gulf separated the two worlds, across which ships, incessantly, sailed to and fro. Crashing
waves separated the two shores and only the thoughts still journeyed from one country
to the other. Cyriel Buysse Flemish author, 1931
12 1 Introduction
A substantial majority of people believe that our history commenced from the very moment an explosion in space entailed the creation of our earth. Others think that human history was only initiated from the moment writing was first invented (Baughn, 2017; Carr, 2018). In spite of the controversy that these divergent views may provoke, people can be confident that a considerable share of everything there is to know from the very start of our existence to this very day has been written down and classified. Moreover, the available source-based information has been subject to critical analyses that are continuously performed to this day, essentially by historians. This vast array of information ranges from written and printed records to orally transmitted knowledge. In the current digital era, a significant part of all existing historical information is available on the internet (Dentzel, 2013). More importantly, however, this information can be accessed through a wide range of museums all across the globe. In general, museums play a key role in the further transmission of the information on human evolution and history that allegedly helps to define ourselves as human beings and to understand the condition of being human (Corfield, 2008, para. 4). From the moment human dispersal was initiated, cultural, social, and technological ideas were actively interchanged as well (Conrad, Helfmann, Zonker, Winkelmann, & Schütte, 2018, para. 2). This process of information distribution has never come to an end and still continues until today. It is due to this ever-growing continuous flux of information around the world, often referred to as globalisation, that museums assumed new representational roles as “interpreters of cultural expressions”, as described by Young (1999, p. 11). She states that globalisation has had, and still continues to have, a significant influence on the way in which museums “rethink their roles and objectives within new, relativist frames” (p. 11).
According to Hooper-Greenhill (1994, p. 1), museums in the United Kingdom were at a critical moment in their long history at the beginning of the 1990s. She signals that museums had to prove and expose their social relevance at that time because their function as a public service became more prominent. Therefore, they had to gain more information about their visitors and their needs and become more proficient by providing pleasant, interesting, and worthwhile museum experiences. The transformation that most museums went through implied a shift from static repositories to active and interactive learning environments. The only way to achieve this was through a radical reorganisation of the entire museum culture that had to open up to new ideas and new approaches. Moreover, Hooper-Greenhill adds that “this move forward was the only way forward for the future” (p. 1)
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because the values of scholarship, research, and collection had been put above the needs of the visitors for too long. She concludes that museums faced a challenge in which the traditional concerns had to be combined with educational values that expose how a museum’s collection and data “can add to the quality of life for all” (p. 1). Parallelly, the translations of museum narratives became more important since they helped museums to achieve the abovementioned objectives (“Translations can promote diversity,” 2019, para. 1). In addition, it should be mentioned that the shift towards active and interactive learning environments did not only occur in the UK, but in museums all across the world. This observation will be demonstrated in section 1.1.
In the following section, this shift, and its relevance, from what is described as an ‘old’ museology to a ‘new’ museology will be clarified and embedded in the topic of this paper. In addition, the way in which it enabled a heightened awareness of the importance of translations of museum narratives, also entitled multilingualism, will be outlined. Moreover, the translation process in museums is of central importance in the present paper whose aim is to identify the translation shifts in the multilingual museum texts in the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3rd ed.), the concept of multilingualism can be defined as “a state in which more than two languages are native”. In view of museums, this definition indicates that the provided textual material is available in multiple languages.
1.1 Understanding the ‘New Museology’ in a multilingual museum setting
Since the 1970s the museum sector has been subject to a radical change. Increasingly, museums were politically and economically pressurised to devote all their attention to their visitors rather than to their collections. From that moment onwards, a shift towards greater accessibility and a progressive opening-up has appeared throughout the museum world. This climate of increasing social reflexivity within the profession has been labeled “a new museology” (Ross, 2004, p. 84). According to IGI Global (n.d.), new museology can be defined as follows:
The term ‘New Museology’ refers to a new approach to museum practice that appeared at the end of the 1980s. New Museology reflects a greater awareness of the social and political role of museums and encompasses meaningful community participation in curatorial practices.
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Vergo (1989) broadens this definition and adds that the existence of a ‘new’ museology presumes the existence of an ‘old’ museology. Therefore, he defines the modern interpretation of museology as “a state of widespread dissatisfaction with the ‘old’ museology both within and outside the museum profession” (p. 3). He proceeds that the ‘old’ museology focused too much on museum methods and too little on museums’ purposes. For this reason, museology represents a relatively recent discipline because no one had ever thought of museums as a phenomenon worthy of study. Ravelli (2006, p. 94) summarizes that one of the key defining features of the ‘new’ museology is the relation that museums establish with their public. Similarly, Sonaglio (2016, p. 1) states that the movement is concerned with the involvement of museum audiences and consequently with improving museums’ relations with their visitors.
The definition of a ‘new’ museology brings us to the renewed awareness of the need for qualitative texts and faithful translations in museums triggered by this movement, which is of importance to the topic of this paper. Liao (2018, p. 1) specifies that creative industries, to which the museum industry belongs, are widely recognised as a fundamental drive for economic growth. More specifically, it is the museums that represent a key cultural asset in this economic development. With this knowledge in mind, it becomes clear that the practice of museum translation helps museums to meet their new expectations as non-profit institutions at the service of society, open to the public, which, according to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), “communicate the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment” (ICOM, 2017, para. 1).
In general, providing visitors of various nationalities and cultures with objective and reliable museum texts can present difficulties because some visitors may be more sensitive to culture-related subjects or the intercultural confrontation of historical information. Purser (2000), for example, conducted a study about how culture-bound museumsthat tell stories about delicate topics in other cultures can cause offence. To illustrate her findings, she attended an exhibition about the people of the Pacific in a major European museum where indigenous cultures are the main subject matter. She learned that the texts displayed in this museum raise conflicts and involve “intercultural issues of racism and misrepresentation” (p. 1). To prevent such conflicts, museums are expected to communicate information in the most nuanced manner possible. Moreover, it is the translation process of museum texts that can complicate the textual production in museums even further because
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the result of the process is presented to visitors from a mixture of cultures as well. Purser’s study is once again mentioned in section 2.3.2 of this paper as a meaningful contribution to the study of texts in museums.
Next, a study on interlingual and intercultural transfers in museum texts has been conducted by Guillot (2014, pp. 74-75), whose study is more thoroughly discussed in section 2.4. She explains that, in a UK higher education context, the response of students to texts and their translations in local museums has been rather negative. She specifies that French and Spanish-speaking students mostly consider English source texts “excessively simple” (p. 74) and not specific enough. The native English-speaking students, in turn, mostly view French and Spanish texts as too formal and specialised.
Furthermore, Rázusová (2017, p. 52) states that the recipients themselves assign meaning to texts, relying on their own knowledge, because of which it is barely possible to refer to museum communication as something objective and universal. She explains that a museum context complicates the task of writers and translators because they have to meet the needs of both native and non-native visitors. In terms of unilingual museum texts, this suggests that writers have to maintain a balance in their texts. Specifically, this means that their texts have to be comprehensible for native speakers of the target language, which is English in Rázusová’s study, and for non-native visitors for whom English is merely an intermediary language. For translations in particular, translators have to consider the notion of “the heterogeneous target readership” (p. 52) when they adopt the most appropriate translation on individual language levels. To illustrate her findings, Rázusová enumerates some examples collected from British and Eastern Slovakian museums in which the translations of the museum texts have engendered a shift in referential meaning. Overall, these types of shifts entail a change in the conception of a certain object or explanation. In the case of Rázusová’s study, the Slovak slamená strecha, for example, is often translated as thatched roof in English which implies that the roof is made from thatch only. The materials used to build traditional Slovak style houses, however, were not limited to this building material. Because of this referential shift, the English-speaking visitors do not receive the exact same information as the Slovak-speaking ones, but merely a generalisation of the initial word.
Even though the example above provides only one illustration of an interlingual difference triggered by a translation shift, similar differences are very common in
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multilingual museum texts. In view of this paper, the interlingual differences that exist in the museum texts of the Red Star Line Museum (RSLM) are identified and clarified. In what follows, a brief overview of the RSLM is provided. Moreover, the research question that this paper plans to answer is thoroughly explained.
1.2 The Red Star Line Museum: a brief overview
Het Red Star Line Museum nodigt je uit op een bewogen reis in het voetspoor van de landverhuizers (The Red Star Line Museum invites you to an eventful journey in the
footsteps of the emigrants.). This catchphrase marks the beginning of a visitor’s tour through the RSLM. Even though the plans for the establishment of the museum were on the table from 1992 onwards, it took until 27 September 2013 before the museum was officially inaugurated by the current Belgian King Philippe and Queen Mathilde. This section provides a brief historical overview of the museum’s story.
In 1872 the Red Star Line company was founded in Antwerp, the capital of the Belgian province of Antwerp. In the beginning, the company only possessed some separate facilities across Antwerp until it settled in its permanent location along Rijnkaai. Until 1934 the Red Star Line (RSL) was one the most significant companies for the transfer of emigrants coming from all over Europe across the Atlantic Ocean to America, their ultimate destination. At the company’s height, at the onset of the First World War, the Red Star Line possessed 133 vessels and transferred some 85,000 passengers a year from all across Europe. It was not until 1934 that the company was forced to close its doors due to tightened American immigration laws and a severe economic backwash during the interbellum. At that time, the company transferred some two million Europeans across the Atlantic. After the company’s bankruptcy, the buildings at Rijnkaai were given a new purpose for port operations. Along with the company’s decline, its history was little by little forgotten. As previously stated, plans to commemorate this extraordinary history were elaborated from 1992 onwards until the museum was inaugurated (Brenders & Dubaere, 2014).
At present, the museum annually welcomes some 100,000 visitors, 3,000 of whom are new residents of the city of Antwerp (Mellor, 2020, para. 28). As one might expect, the museum’s objective is to inform people about the journey people from across Europe completed to America. The museum does not exclusively provide factual information, but personal stories and narratives as well. Furthermore, the museum tries to activate its visitors
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to live through the experiences of the RSL immigrants in numerous ways. This activating purpose that the museum tries to achieve complies with the requirements introduced by the ‘New Museology movement’, on which sections 2.2 and 2.3 of this paper provide more details. For example, the museum tries to imitate the journey people made by letting its visitors pass through and (physically) experience every step of the process. For instance, in the third part of the museum space, visitors can relive how people had to prepare for departure and had to have their clothes disinfected. The museum attempts to engage people in this event by exposing real extracts from letters and numerous testimonies dating back to the beginning of the 20th century of people who had decided to embark on their journey or who were still considering their options. As an illustration, Matthew Kowalski from Middletown in the American state of Connecticut stated the following in an authentic English letter on February 23 in 1891:
Bring sugar, tea and snacks along on the ship so that you can take care of yourself in case you cannot eat the food that is provided on the ship. Do not bring too much clothing, only your best clothes and two pillows. Do not overload yourself too much because otherwise I don’t know how you will be able to walk across the border. (quotes from letters: appendix II, fragment 4.1)
Thereafter, visitors continue to the showers and disinfection where they can smell the specific odour all the immigrants were said to spread. As another example, the museum shows real-life testimonies of immigrants on tape who started their journey and subsequent new life across the Atlantic. Other statements, in contrast, reveal that some immigrants were unable to settle down and decided to return to their mother country in spite of all the effort it required to reach their new hometown. The following sections of the museum guide visitors through ‘the doctor’s visit’, ‘travelling steerage’, and ‘life on board’.
As stated above, museums underwent a shift towards principles of New Museology throughout the 21st century and the RSLM is no different. Even though the museum was only inaugurated in 2013, it still has to respond to the new challenge to make museums as diverse, equal, accessible, and inclusive as possible. In addition, museums have to strive to “engage multicultural audiences and strengthen ties to their local communities” (“Translations can promote diversity”, 2019). An important manner in which the RSLM seeks to accomplish these objectives is through providing multilingual information to its visitors. More specifically, the museum provides information in five different European
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languages, namely Dutch, French, English, German, and Italian. Since the museum is based in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, all possible information is provided in Dutch, mostly accompanied with French and English translations. The translations that are inaccessible in the museum space itself can be consulted in supplementary brochures that foreign language visitors can find at the museum’s front desk. Comprehensive brochures are provided for French, English, and German speakers and an abridged version for Italian visitors.
On the 4th of December in 2014, the Red Star Line Museum was rewarded with the Flemish ‘Wablieft-prijs1’ for the quality of their accessible explanations across the museum. The museum’s president, Luc Verheyen, states that his museum manages to capture the essence in concise texts and, at the same time, still achieves to reveal different nuances, despite the fact that the story being told is not so easy (“RSLM wint wablieft- prijs”, 2014). This award proves that the museum has managed to create accessible and understandable content in multiple languages and, consequently, has been able to comply with the ‘new’ museology standards. Accessibility and transparency, however, do not necessarily imply that interlingual differences between the various translations are absent. In fact, translations are most likely to engender shifts in content (Al- Zoubi & Al-Hassnawi, 2001). As a result, an English-speaking visitor could possibly take home other information or associations from his visit than a native speaker of Dutch. Identifying these possible discrepancies between the existing translations in the RSLM is the primary aim of this dissertation.
1.3 Research question and hypothesis
The motivation for this thesis arises from the importance of museums as collectors and conduits for historical information. More importantly, it is the museum texts, which function as the so-called conduits, that have to be accessible to as many different audiences as possible (Strachan, 2017, p. 2). This necessity of accessibility is due to the facilitation of travel around the globe and cultural tourism, which have led to the expansion and the diversification of museum audiences beyond boundaries. Conversely, these events have also entailed new challenges in intercultural communication and museum translation (Sonaglio, 2016). According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM) museums are “permanent institutions in the service of society that communicate the tangible and intangible heritage
1 The ‘Wablieft-prijs’ is a prize for ‘clear language’ rewarding Flemish media personalities, politicians or institutions that
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of humanity and its environment” (Van Oost, 2018, p. 4). Concretely, this means that they ‘serve’ international visitors as well for whom translations need to be provided. In view of this context, the goal of this paper is to define the potential interlingual differences between the Dutch museum texts and their French and English translations, which might leave foreign language visitors with divergent information. To achieve this goal, a corpus was compiled that consists of 24 Dutch RSLM texts from panels in the museum hall and brochures, which are available at the front desk, along with their French and English translations. Moreover, translation shifts that triggered the possible interlingual differences were analysed in terms of linguistic categories. The corpus can be consulted in the second appendix at the end of this paper.
Partially based on Rázusová’s (2017) findings (see section 1.1), the analysis of the corpus will hypothetically reveal that nuances repeatedly have been left out in the translations and that they contain several generalisations. Before proceeding with the analysis of the translation shifts that led to interlingual disparities between the museum texts studied (see chapter 4), it is interesting to explore and present the most significant findings of studies that have been conducted within the study of multilingualism in museums and the translation of museum narratives (see chapter 2).
In the following chapter, the theoretical framework is presented. In accordance with the presentation of the ‘New Museology’, the fields of study that this movement has initiated, are outlined. Therefore, the most significant recent studies on the translation of museum narratives are presented. Subsequently, chapter three presents the adopted method of this paper proposing, inter alia, a framework in which the analysis of our study can be situated. The fourth chapter presents the findings of the corpus study from two different perspectives, viz. the text genres of the museum texts studied and the linguistic categories in which the translation shifts can be classified. Finally, a discussion of the results and a conclusion are provided in chapter five, which complete this paper on interlingual differences in multilingual museum communication. More specifically, the discussion considers the abovementioned framework in view of the analysis performed in chapter 4.
20 2 Theoretical framework
As mentioned in the introduction, the theoretical framework of this paper aims to outline the fields of study that have been triggered by ‘New Museology’. The shift from the ‘old’ museology towards the ‘new’ has been clarified in chapter 1, but the development of museology as an academic field of study remains to be clarified. Therefore, this chapter returns to the foundation and interpretation of museology adding a background introduction. Subsequently, the way in which the abovementioned shift has had an impact on the analysis and the production of museum texts is explained. Thereafter, an overview is provided on significant researches that have been conducted within the field of museum studies. To conclude, the theoretical framework attempts to outline research that has been conducted on interlingual and intercultural transfers in museum texts.
2.1 An introduction to museology
Before proceeding with the analysis of the corpus, it is interesting to trace the foundation of museology studies, which gave rise to the analysis of museum texts. Van Mensch (1992, p. 4) states that the first application of the term ‘museology’, and its related older term ‘museography’, is not very well recorded. Both terms, however, were in use from the second half of the 19th century onwards. In their earliest years, both ‘museology’ and ‘museography’ were used in the context of manuals that explained the way in which museums were ought to function. Soares (2019) adds that both terms were related to “the organisation of collections and the practical and descriptive universe of the museum” (p. 21). From 1969 onwards, the International Council of Museums, usually abbreviated as ICOM, started to use the terms in distinctive ways. In particular, former ICOM director Georges Henri Rivière defined ‘museology’ as “the science that studies the mission and organisation of the museum” and ‘museography’ as “the set of techniques in relation to museology” (Soares, 2019, p. 18). Marouvić (1998, p. 12) elaborates that the discipline of museology in fact started as museography in which the collection, the preservation, and the exhibition of objects were of central importance. It was not until the theoretical framework, proposed by museography, overlooked its purpose that the shift towards museology occurred.
This shift manifested itself as a movement of professionalisation in the field of study of museology (van Mensch, 1992, p. 4). It took place in what van Mensch (1995) describes as “two museum revolutions” (p. 135). The term ‘revolution’ is adopted to stress the radical
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changes that occurred. The first revolution, which took place in the period between 1880 and 1920, is also named ‘the museum modernization movement’. This movement relied on the idea that all kinds of museums shared the same set of practical problems. Therefore, new concepts with a strong educational purpose were introduced. This led to an increasing interest in an overarching discipline (van Mensch, 1995, p. 135). Gradually, museology was considered a “field of interest with its own identity” that applied to “the emerging academic field” (van Mensch, 1992, p. 4). At that time, a comprehensive museological theory did not exist, but the approach to museum work, however, was already shifting from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary. It was not until the 1960s that the second revolution took place. Even though museums underwent similar changes as during the first revolution, the emphasis shifted towards the development of museums as social institutions. This shift matches with what has previously been described as ‘New Museology’, which recognised the social and educational role of museums. During this period, museology emerged in scientific circles and attempts were made to teach the discipline at universities (van Mensch, 1992). Vergo (1989, p. 3) concludes that this shift of focus is an expression of an emerging interest of academic researchers outside the area of expertise of museology. Therefore, there is a tendency to replace the term ‘New Museology’ with the straightforward term ‘Museum Studies’ since museology has gradually been integrated in the Cultural Studies discourse.
Over the years, practical courses provided for future professional museum workers enabled museum studies to develop further. Even though it was a rather slow process, it allowed museology to become part of a (post-)graduate curriculum at both masters and doctoral level. Currently, there are universities with entire departments or chairs devoted to Museum Studies. In addition, the amount of books, journals and press releases dedicated to museology has increased considerably over the past decade (Lorente, 2001, p. 1). Therefore, Arinze (1999) states that it is important for museum employees to work closely together with departments of museum studies and museum experts to determine how to integrate the educational resources that are available in museums into the curriculum of museology. According to Carbonell (2012, p. 153) museology remains an important discipline because researchers need to continue to carefully monitor integral shifts in museum history and museum meanings. Smeds (2019, p. 13) elaborates that further sustainable development of museums and heritage is necessary. Therefore, a critical view of museological theory and museum practice in relation to traditions is imperative.
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2.2 The impact of new museological approaches on the analysis and production of museum texts
This section intends to clarify the way in which new museological approaches have had an influence on the importance of the analysis and production of textual content in museums. The concept of ‘museum texts’, however, may be a source of ambiguity. Therefore, in accordance with Ravelli (2006, p. 1), the possible ambiguity of the term will be resolved first. Ravelli states that there are at least two ways in which the term can be interpreted. In the first place, ‘museum texts’ can be understood as a reference to ‘texts in museums’, ranging from labels, brochure descriptions, and extended texts to text panels, catalogue items, and wall texts. Simultaneously, the term may also indicate ‘museums as texts’. In this interpretation, the concept of ‘museum texts’ signifies the way in which a whole institution constructs meaning, communicating both with and to its public. In this specific paper, museum texts will primarily be analysed in accordance with their first meaning, namely texts in museums. The analysis of ‘texts in museums’, however, also reveals how museums construct meaning as institutes at the service of society and, consequently, how they fulfil their social role. This indicates that Ravelli’s interpretations are closely related. As a result, the analysis of the corpus in this paper equally supports the notion of ‘museums as texts’.
Furthermore, this section provides an answer to the question why museum texts should be analysed in the first place. According to Purser (2000, p. 1) the relevance of the analysis of museum texts arises from the major role they play in public education, which makes them critically important. She adds that museum texts are influential means through which interesting stories can be told. Likewise, Ravelli (2006) explains that museum texts are important because of their pivotal role in a museum’s contemporary communication programme. According to Ravelli, communication is paramount because it is mainly about constructing meanings, which for their part can be understood as “constructing, sharing and interpreting a range of content, attitudes and values” (p. 3). However, this does not signify that communication is a transparent concept because it takes numerous skills for both an individual and an institution to communicate efficiently. Furthermore, debates can occur over which content should be communicated and the manner in which it ought to be done. The interest in communication within museums arises from the fact that there are still institutions that fail to meet the expectations and thus create content that is considered too
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complex by their visitors, which in turn might cause frustration. On the other hand, some museums do manage to provide texts which maintain the balance between accessible, and at
the same time, interesting and challenging texts (Ravelli, 2006).
Hooper- Greenhill (1994, pp. 115-116) summarizes that objects displayed in museums are consistently put in context with words. Therefore, museums are as much concerned with words then they are with objects. Museums and galleries transmit their messages by combinations of words, images, and objects, which might be subject to diverse interpretations and to the imposition of numerous meanings. Consequently, studying museum texts might be able to cast some new light on these concerns.
The importance of the analysis of museum texts runs parallel with a renewed focus on textual production in museums themselves, in which the new museological approaches that appeared throughout the second half of the 20th century have played a role. To begin with, Bennett (1998) links the need for unambiguous and straightforward labels and museum texts with the shift museums experienced throughout the years, which emphasised their role as educational and “civilising” environments (as cited in Ravelli, 2006, p. 3). It is striking that the desire for understandable labels and texts in museums even existed before profound changes in the museum sector took place. In the 1891 London
Journal of the Society of the Arts, Rivers states that the great ambition of that day was the
establishment of museums that would be able to educate their visitors. More importantly, those museums would have to be able to reach the working classes who, until then, had been excluded from the world of science and knowledge. To serve those classes, museums would have had to eliminate all possible ambiguity in museum texts, so that they would appeal to a much broader audience. According to Macdonald (1998), the urgent need for the production of clear labels and texts was endlessly debated at annual museum conferences that took place at the end of the 19th century. In addition, the educational role of museums for a varied and broader audience was repeatedly under discussion in those conferences as well. The above sources illustrate that the aspiration for clear, detailed, and principally straightforward museum texts has not exclusively been stimulated by the movement of ‘New Museology’, but that it is an ambition which has been cherished for many decades by numerous researchers. In the next subchapter, the focus shifts from the analysis and production of museum texts to the study of museum texts and its methodology. The section discusses one of the most prominent studies that has been conducted within the study of museum texts along with a selection of other research.
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2.3 Contributions to the study of texts in museums
To begin with, this section summarizes what the study of museum texts actually involves. Pierroux & Ludvigsen (2013) explain that the study of text in museums is a component of Museum Studies in which the design and use of texts and labels in the museum space, the content in more general terms, are researched from different perspectives. One perspective includes linguistic approaches that identify themes, functions, and structures of museum texts through detailed and formal analysis of content. Furthermore, semiotic perspectives broaden the study of communicative signs by considering texts in the exhibition setting while paying attention to “relations between modalities of expression and the spatial organisation of the museum” (p. 154). Museum education research and practice has implemented both approaches in order to develop guidelines for text legibility and comprehension for various types of visitors. Pierroux & Ludvigsen (2013) add that studies in this field observe the writing process from the description of tensions and compromises to ideas and implementation. Moreover, these studies show that museum texts are mostly constructed by different authors who participate in an often chaotic collaborative process in which specific content areas and disciplinary knowledge are negotiated. In addition, this collaborative process takes place in a space where several types of visitors appear with different expertise and understanding who go through their own meaning-making processes. Studies of such processes take place from both an ‘outsider’ and an ‘insider’ point of view in different types of museums in order to gain more knowledge of organisational and disciplinary practices related to text production. Examples of studies that embrace a linguistic approach are those of Purser (2000), Ravelli (2006), and Atkins, Velez, Goudy, & Dunbar (2008). Similarly, some researchers have adopted a semiotic approach such as Ventola & Hoffinger (2004) and Diamantopoulou, Insulander, & Lindstrand (2012). The subchapters below explore some of these studies and provide a non-exhaustive overview of other studies that have been conducted within the study of museum texts.
2.3.1 The conception of museum texts as communication frameworks
This introduction to one of the most comprehensive studies in the field of museum texts is not entirely new since the researcher’s name has already been mentioned in the previous paragraphs, namely Louise Ravelli. In 2006 Ravelli published a book entitled Museum texts:
25 Communication Frameworks in which she addresses the key question of how museums
communicate. She attempts to formulate an answer to this question by providing a set of frameworks that seek to investigate the complexity of communication in museums. The frameworks aim to improve the way in which we critically analyse and understand textual production in museums. As mentioned above, Ravelli distinguishes two definitions for the concept of museum texts: the conventional written texts that are displayed in museum spaces and museums themselves as a communicative text. On the basis of numerous examples, she demonstrates that communication can never be understood separately from its social context. Additionally, she states that communication has to be seen as an active process of meaning-making in which visitors actively participate.
Ravelli analyses meaning in museum texts on the basis of three interconnecting frameworks:
1. the organisational framework; 2. the interactional framework, and 3. the representational framework.
At a mid-level organisation, the organisational framework determines the level of cohesion and coherence in a text and the modes through which a museum communicates. The representational framework refers to the manner in which ‘reality’ is construed in discourse. The interactional framework involves the meaning that is created by the communication between interactants. More precisely, the interactional framework refers to the type of relationship that museums tend to develop with their visitors through means of “modality, authority, and interactive features of discourse in museum texts” (Sonaglio, 2016, p. 46). More details on each of the abovementioned frameworks are provided in section 3.2 of this paper. Overall, Ravelli adopts a social semiotic approach to language, which takes its inspiration from the crucial status of social interaction in Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics model that was published in 1978.
The framework of organisational meaning can, in turn, be divided into several subcategories according to various genres of museum texts, or as Ravelli (2006) describes them: “culturally defined patterns of communication serving some social purpose” (p. 19). She adds that text genres are one of the principal organising devices and possibly one of the most subtle. Furthermore, organisational meanings “apply to the notion of ‘text’ at different levels” (p. 18). ‘Texts’ can thus imply a single clause, a section of a text, a whole text or different texts in relation to each other. Ravelli continues that choices made in this
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framework “both arise from and contribute to” (p. 18) the context of the situation or the
Mode of communication (see section 3.2). The following paragraph lists the different genres
that Ravelli distinguishes based upon their purpose. It is, however, important to remember that ‘genre’ is not a fixed concept, but “a meaning-making resource” that is consequently open to innovation (p. 20).
One of the most common genres that can be found in museum texts is that of Report. Ferguson, MacLulich, & Ravelli (1995) state that this genre’s social purpose is to “describe the way things are” (as cited in Ravelli, 2006, p. 20). Overall, texts written in this genre help the museum realise its purpose of reporting on knowledge by describing object, articles or phenomena. The second genre is referred to as Explanation, the main goal of which is to explain how things have happened and why things are the way they are. In doing so, the museum fulfils its educational role by providing an illustration of the occurrence of a phenomenon or the origins and use of an object (Sonaglio, 2016, p. 42). Ravelli clarifies that explanations tend to be written in the present tense, but unlike reports, are represented by the use of temporal sequences, to structure the text, and by the adoption of verbs that focus on actions. As in reports, explanations tend to be generic. In addition to reports and explanations, museums provide Expositions as well, in which a certain point of view is put forward that may influence the reader’s opinion. Ravelli clarifies that expositions mostly have three main parts: the introduction which covers the argument itself, the body which compromises each argument separately, and, lastly, a restatement of the argument which concludes the exposition. Expositions run parallel to Directives, in which museums try to raise awareness about certain social topics and issues. The purpose of a directive is therefore to change readers’ actions or behaviour in their daily lives, as opposed to influence one’s opinion. Sonaglio explains that this genre is mostly adopted in scientific and anthropological museums because the genre supports important arguments that are characteristic for those museums. Finally, the last genre is related to the persuasive genres of the exposition and directive, namely the Discussion. In this genre multiple versions of a certain debate are presented, in which contrary interpretations are put forward (Sonaglio, 2016, p. 44). Unlike expositions and directives, discussions highlight the different sides to an argument, which might lead to a recommendation or an open conclusion (White, 1994, in Ravelli, 2006, p. 23). As stated above, these subcategories are all part of the organisational framework, which represent the modes through which the communication in museums takes place (Ravelli, 2006, pp. 20-23).
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The frameworks presented by Ravelli provide a good basis for the analysis of the translations of the museum texts examined in this specific thesis. The way in which they are applied, is outlined in chapter 3, which will also add an in-depth explanation of each framework.
2.3.2 Other contributions
In addition to Ravelli’s pivotal work, a number of other studies are relevant in the theoretical framework of this paper. Purser (2000), who has already been briefly mentioned in chapter 1, has conducted a study on the way in which culture-bound museums that tell stories about other cultures are likely to cause offence. To illustrate this statement, she visited the Berlin- Dahlem Museum Centre in Germany in which the customs and traditions of Australian indigenous cultures are presented. Her study uncovered numerous communication problems in the museum texts. As an example, the texts were written in an academic style which made it almost impossible for visitors without any knowledge and background on the subject to comprehend them. Visitors who did understand the texts revealed that the texts displayed in this museum raised conflicts and involved “intercultural issues of racism and misrepresentation” (p. 1).
Subsequently, Atkins et al. (2008) adopted a linguistic approach in research on the effects of different setups of museum exhibits on parent/child interactions and conversations. They state that multigenerational groups who engage in “self-directed activity” (p. 162) are well suited for addressing questions on how social interaction impacts learning in informal educational environments. To address their research question, the role that labels and other text material plays in the way visitors behave at a heat camera exhibit of Traveling Exhibits at Museums of Science (TEAMS) was examined. In their study, Atkins et al. state that texts within the museum space have an influence on the way in which visitors engage and the type of conversations they hold. To demonstrate their findings, the study provides multiple transcriptions of conversations that were held in front of museum texts. As an example, one transcription shows that a mother clearly assumed a teacher’s role by guiding her children through the questions and activity provided on a label. As a result, the children were able to participate enthusiastically in the activity and understood its main idea. Such active participation did not occur when eye-catching and lucid labels and texts were not present. Museum texts were thus shown to have a profound influence on the experience of visitors at the exhibition.
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An example of a semiotic approach to the study of museum texts is the research conducted by Diamantopoulou et al. (2012) on the meaning-making processes in museum exhibitions. In accordance with Ravelli (2006) they adopted a social semiotic approach to communication and meaning-making. The main goal of their study was to identify how visitors consumed the social environment of a museum in order to make and remake meanings. To classify their findings, Diamantopoulou et al. held three aspects regarding the conditions for meaning-making in mind: “a) the social environments in which communication takes place with their specificities, b) the cultural resources for representation available in any one (social) site, and c) the technologies of dissemination (as well as production, reproduction) in use” (p. 18). The first condition for meaning-making implies a social venture. As an example, the study presents the museum experience of a couple that visited the Museum of National Antiquities in Sweden with an audio guide. In an interview after the exhibition, one of the two spouses stated that the audio guide “became a restriction for their engagement with the exhibition” (p. 18). In addition, the visit became a more individual experience because the conversations between the spouses were reduced to the minimum. In the second volet of their study, meaning-making is considered “a principle engagement with available modes” (p. 22). Maps drawn by visitors about the exhibition after their tour revealed that “visitors make meaning from and re-represent aspects of the exhibition according to their own interests and agendas” (p. 24). To conclude their study, Diamantopoulou et al. followed a lady with a camera in the Swedish Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. In this context of meaning-making, they considered technologies as resources for selecting and framing. The lady explained that she took photographs of museum texts in the exhibition space as an aid for her memory and to save information for later. According to the researchers, the use of a camera expands the “encounter with the exhibition over time and across social and physical circumstances” (p. 27). Since the lady decided herself on the type of photographs she took, she created the conditions for her own meaning-making and, consequently, restricted her own meaning-making process when she would revise her photographs later on.
2.4 Interlingual and intercultural transfers in museum texts
The study of texts in museums leads us to interlingual and intercultural transfers in museum texts, which is also the main research subject of this paper. This section outlines and summarises some of the most significant studies that have been conducted in this field.
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Guillot (2014) mentions that research interest in museum communication has been rather limited in linguistics and translation studies. To illustrate this, she names a few exceptional studies written in English, namely Ravelli (2006), Sturge (2007), and Neather (2008). She continues that linguistic and cultural representation in museum texts generate questions that have barely received any academic attention. Those questions emerge from intercultural differences across languages and from numerous factors such as museum policies and visitors’ expectations. Guillot explains that museums texts are highly relevant domains of study from a contextual and a pragmatic point of view because museum audiences are increasingly becoming international and because the diffusion of cultural products across the globe is accelerating. The subject of interlingual translations should therefore be of topical interest. In the context of the British Museum in London, she points out that the labels and language-mediated information is anchored in time, space and culture. Even though Guillot does not provide any specific information about the studies and their applied methods upon which her findings are based, she summarises that this ‘anchoring’ is anecdotally highlighted by students in the UK with no professional experience in the field of translation. In addition, the response to translated museum texts has been similar over the years. As an example, native French and Spanish-speaking students consider English translations as excessively simple in both content and form. Native German students indicate that English source texts in museums often lack explicitness, and for native English students texts provided in French and Spanish are often too specialised and formal. She concludes that the reactions of the students, though generalised and simplified, provide an incentive to the possible reasons behind these contrasts in cultural perception and their implications for translations. The following paragraphs expand on some of the abovementioned studies conducted in the field of museum translations.
Sturge (2007) published a monograph on translations and museums. Her work only focuses on ethnographic museums that assume a role “as the public face of anthropology” (p. 135), among which the Metropolitan Museum of Arts and the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. She explains that the source text in museums is principally translated by the displayed artefacts themselves, ancient tools and weapons, which leads to the absence of linguistic translations. These artefacts are mostly accompanied by explanatory labels and texts which can be conceived as their further translations. In her study, Sturge discusses these labels and texts
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at a macro level, which means she does not consider the translations in a narrow textual sense. She proceeds by stating that museologists consider museums as the producers of meaning through the writing and reading of the artefact displays, which can be understood as a linguistic metaphor. Furthermore, she broaches the experience of visitors in a museum. It seems that visitors often move around the displays following a different route and interpret them in different modes than what the compilers had in mind. Mossop (2007, pp. 373-374), who has written a summary of Sturge’s work, adds that an interesting question relating to Sturge’s study is to know whether the artefacts predominate or the labels. Visitors can observe the present artefacts and interpret them in their own way, which may differ from the accompanying texts. This is slightly different in the cases where translations are provided because visitors cannot interpret the source text in that context, even if it is available.
Next, Neather, who examined translations in a museum context in 2008, explores “the nature of interlingual translation practice in the museum focusing in particular on the ways in which visual elements shape or constrain the translation of verbal texts” (p. 218). He explains that museums are complex semiotic environments in which multiple systems of signification interact in order to produce meaning. These interactions take place at “intra-semiotic levels” which means “between objects, between objects and photographs and between texts” and “inter-semiotic levels” (p. 218) which signifies between various verbal and visual elements. Therefore, an effective target text can only be produced if interlingual translations take these multiple oppositions into account. Neather states that Ravelli made a similar point concerning the multi-modal nature of museum texts. When he was writing his paper, however, Ravelli’s study had not yet been published which did not allow him to provide a fuller consideration of her findings. Now her study has been issued, her ideas have become clearer. In her 2006 study, Ravelli explains that each semiotic system makes its own meanings that range from verbal elements to arrangements of objects and rooms produced via layout. The meanings at this level are considered ‘first order meanings’. Subsequently, ‘second-order meanings’ develop when they are re-patterned and give rise to “the level of symbolic articulation” (p. 151). Therefore, it can be stated that Neather’s and Ravelli’s ideas on museums as semiotic environments are compatible.
Furthermore, the unpublished Master's thesis by Sonaglio (2016) is briefly considered which like Guillot states that the possible contributions of translation studies to museum communication are still largely unexplored, even though the roles that museums play increasingly grow as “collecting, preserving, representing and translating cultures for
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audiences no longer community or nationally determined” (p. 1). Sonaglio’s study is mentioned here because it provides a good example of the way in which Ravelli’s communication frameworks can be applied to the analysis of museum texts. The next chapter presents the way in which this is done and the relevance to the present paper. Furthermore, Sonaglio compared Italian museum texts with their English translations retrieved from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Vatican Museums in the Vatican City in her research. Her most striking finding suggests that the register is repeatedly altered in the English translations. In addition, Sonaglio deems that the English target texts are more subjective than the Italian source texts because the opinions of the translators stand out.
To conclude, it is interesting to mention that the University of Leicester issues an online journal entitled the Museological Review edited by the PhD community of Museum Studies since 1994. The journal’s page on the Leicester University website indicates that the annual journal is edited by students who volunteer to become a member of the ‘editorial board’. The journal’s objective is to use the Museum Studies perspective to engage with contemporary subjects and to contribute to knowledge. The students are supposed to conduct research in museum-related fields “through a variety of formats, disciplines and nationalities” (para. 1). This initiative proves that the academic curriculum of ‘Museum Studies’ is an ever-growing discipline that receives increasing attention in the academic research community. Moreover, the publication of this journal runs parallel with Lorente’s (2001) statement, presented in section 2.1 of the theoretical framework, which declares that the number of journals dedicated to museology has increased considerably over the past decades.
32 3 Methodological framework
As stated in the introduction, this paper aims to define interlingual differences in multilingual museum texts at the Red Star Line Museum (RSLM) in Antwerp and to analyse translation shifts in terms of linguistic categories. To be able to achieve this purpose, a selection of Dutch RSLM texts along with their French and English translations has been assembled in a corpus that can be consulted in the second appendix at the end of this paper. The corpus comprises diverse types of texts ranging from formal and informative to emotive and personal. Before analysing the corpus, some clarifications about our adopted method are paramount.
To begin with, definitions are provided of interlingual differences and
communication. These are two significant terms that are included in this paper’s research
question (see section 1.3). Subsequently, museum communication frameworks are specified, as presented by Ravelli (2006), upon whose research the corpus and analysis of this study are modelled. Lastly, the corpus compiled for the current analysis is introduced and described and the method that was used to conduct the analysis of the material is discussed.
3.1 Defining the notions of interlingual differences and communication
Before a description of the compiled corpus is provided, two principal parts of the research question are defined and interpreted in view of this paper, viz. interlingual differences and
communication.
To achieve this, the first expression interlingual differences is decomposed into its two logical components: interlingual and difference. In the first place, a definition of the term interlingual is formulated. The Online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that
interlingual is an adjective that signifies “between or relating to two languages”, which
should not be confused with the similar term intralingual, which, in turn, is an adjective that means “within a given language; within the bounds of language”. Next, the OED defines the term difference as “a particular way in which two or more things differ”. Because this definition is not sufficiently precise for this paper’s research question (see section 1.3), the term shift is taken into consideration because interlingual differences are usually triggered by shifts in translation. Baker & Saldanha (2008, pp. 269-270) state that “the term shifts commonly refers to changes which occur or may occur in the process of translating”. They continue that “in negative formulations, on the one hand, shifts are looked upon as
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unwelcome results of the translation act, as something to be avoided”, but that “in positive formulations”, on the other hand, “shifts are seen as required, indispensable changes (...) with regard to specific aspects of the source text”. In this study in particular, the interlingual differences triggered by translation shifts between the diverse translations of the museum texts will be analysed and classified.
This brings us to the explanation of the second tier of the research question, namely the term communication, which can potentially be understood and explained in many ways (Ravelli, 2006). In general, the term communication is comprehended as follows:
Communication refers to the transmission and reception of information (a ‘message’) between a source and a receiver using a signalling system: in linguistic contexts, source and receiver are interpreted in human terms, the system involved is a language, and the notion of response to (or acknowledgement of) the message becomes of crucial importance. (Crystal, 2008, p. 89)
The first sentence of Crystal’s definition implies that a message can be transmitted through both verbal and non-verbal communication. In the linguistic context of this paper, however,
communication has to be narrowed down to the interchange of written communication only
between a source and a receiver. Therefore, the term does not need to be understood as the process of oral and written information exchange, but as the written texts only through which a museum tries to communicate both factual knowledge and material that is open to interpretation to its visitors. This signifies that speech communication played in videos in the museum space and audio guides has not been taken into account in the present paper. The RSLM primarily focuses on providing visitors with visual formats rather than their auditory counterparts. In addition, there might be a discrepancy between the auditory sources and their transcriptions which may lead to divergent outcomes in the analysis. More specifically, the primary focus of this thesis is on Dutch written museum texts that are displayed on panels (including texts displayed digitally in the museum space) with their corresponding translation in French and English. In addition to the translations that occur in the museum hall, there are some translations that can only be accessed in their corresponding brochure. In the corpus, which can be consulted in the second appendix, an asterisk clearly indicates which translations need to be retrieved in those brochures. Overall, this thesis considers communication as a fundamentally active process that is always enclosed in a social context (Ravelli, 2006). This embedding originates from people’s need to engage in communication and to interact with each other and with the world. Museums cannot
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distinguish themselves from this need because they tend to engage in the world as well by finding ways to “re-present” it and by creating relations with their visitors (Ravelli, 2006, p. 5). Ravelli adds that “it is the process of communication itself which makes meaning” (p. 6), which implies, in turn, that if the communication process were to fail, there would be a loss of meaning.
In brief, this paper seeks to identify, define, and classify the diverse features of miscellaneous multilingual museum texts translated from Dutch into French and English, which have been taken from the RSLM, based upon the communication frameworks as presented by Ravelli (2006).
3.2 A social-semiotic approach: communication frameworks of meaning
In general, museums have ‘voices’ through which they try to depict events in conformity with a particular worldview (Sonaglio, 2016, p. 93). Consequently, one may ask oneself how to identify a museum’s voice. Faherty (2020) states that every piece of communication provided by a museum tells something about the organisation and what it represents. The phrases formulated, the words employed, and the incorporated punctuation alongside the adopted perspective are powerful means that reveal the tone of voice of the embraced communication methods and the museum’s voice in general. Even though Witcomb (2003) states that meaning should not be considered as ‘nested’ within the text, texts on their own are powerful communicative resources that need to be understood as clearly as possible. In accordance with Sonaglio’s research (2016), the current study adopts Ravelli’s (2006) social-semiotic approach to communication by implementing her interactional frameworks of meaning. Consequently, the means by which museums relate with their public will be clarified. Moreover, the interlingual differences that exist within the different translations of museums’ voices will be exemplified. In addition to Ravelli’s communication frameworks, a brief introduction on Halliday’s (1978) model of register contained in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is in order since Ravelli’s frameworks are underpinned by this linguistic approach.
Halliday, inspired in his part by J. R. Firth, developed an approach to linguistics in which language is considered as a social semiotic system (Almurashi, 2016). According to Crystal’s (2008) Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, Firth was a “Professor of General Linguistics in the University of London, and the formative influence on the development of
