The Linguist

14 The Linguist Vol/63 No/4 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES Meeting the needs of museum audiences requires a creative approach, argues Robert Neather Texts are an essential part of almost any museum exhibition. Whether it's minimalistic object ID labels that give the title and bare- bones information, lengthy thematic panels or more 'optional' materials, such as leaflets and kids' worksheets, texts provide much of the exhibition's interpretive framework. Such texts raise a whole range of interlocking issues that influence translation strategy. These include the handling of specialist cultural terms, spatial restrictions on the amount of multilingual text that a label can accommodate, code preference (which language should be given prominence in a multilingual ensemble), and what other texts are available nearby in the exhibition space (the intertextual dimension). Balancing such factors can sometimes take considerable ingenuity. Yet it is when we consider audience engagement – how the text speaks to and interacts with the museum visitor – that the translator's creative instincts are particularly important. For example, visitors from different cultures may have very different preferences as to how they wish to be addressed. Translators must consider what information is necessary or relevant – or, indeed, interesting – to a particular audience. The question of engaging the visitor's interest often involves what the art historian Michael Baxandall calls the "ostensive" or "pointing" function of language, where language is used to "locate the interest" of an artwork for the viewer. 1 A text describing an artwork is not simply descriptive, he argues, but points to what is interesting. If a text refers to "a big dog" that is present in the artwork, "then 'big' is more a matter of my proposing a kind of interest to be found in the dog: it is interestingly big, I am suggesting." 2 designed to create interest through a knowing or playful reference. This is also seen in many other labels in the series (e.g. 'All Along the Watchtower', describing Roman lookout posts, and 'All Roads Lead to… London', on a label about transport links). In the case of 'On the Waterfront', we have an obvious allusion to the Marlon Brando movie of the same name, which presents the translator with several options. One might be simply to try and replicate the reference to the movie by using the established foreign language title. This might work in French (Sur les quais; 'On the docks'), but it wouldn't in German (Die Faust im Nacken; 'The fist in the neck'). A second solution could be to use a different popular reference from the target culture, which would retain the same kind of creativity but widen the choices available. Still another possibility could be to abandon any attempt at intertextual usage and employ a compensation strategy to introduce creative elements of another kind – for instance rhyme, rhythm or alliteration. We should also consider the possibility of abandoning the creativity completely: some cultures may not see such playfulness as desirable or even appropriate in the context of a museum label presenting elements of the nation's history. It is worth remembering also that intertextuality is often in the eye of the beholder – while the Brando reference might Translations often show adjustments that try to accommodate the potential for differences in viewer interest. In a leaflet text from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, for example, a Chinese text describes the office of the former President in bald terms: 蔣中正總 統坐姿蠟像由林健成先生塑造。('President Chiang Chung-cheng's seated wax figure was created by Mr Lin Chien-ch'eng.') In the published English translation, however, we find: 'Visitors can also see an extremely lifelike wax sculpture of President Chiang Kai-shek by Lin Chien-cheng sitting behind his desk.' The subject of the sentence here is shifted explicitly to the visitor, with the verb 'see' added, drawing the viewer's eye in to the sculpture. An exaggerative adjectival phrase, 'extremely lifelike', is inserted, and this is further reinforced by framing the statue as 'sitting behind his desk'. In the context of the whole passage, not replicated here, it is also of note that this description is moved up much closer to the start of the text, giving it greater salience than in the Chinese. All this, combined with other similar strategies, seeks to inject greater interest into a tableau that might otherwise be somewhat dull for the non-Chinese visitor, and to direct the visitor to what is interesting in the scene. Working with playful texts The issue of creativity is particularly pronounced where the source text is itself written in a highly creative way. Consider, for example, the label 'On the Waterfront', describing Roman London's port, from the Roman history section of the old Museum of London (when it was still in its London Wall incarnation). The creativity stems from a clear intertextual usage that is AT THE MUSEUM Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, which tailors its English-language materials to global audiences (right); Waterloo Region Museum's colourful signage (far right); and (above) Ming dynasty blue-and-white porcelain exhibit Engaging visitors

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