8 The Linguist Vol/56 No/5 2017
www.ciol.org.uk
FEATURES
Are foreign visitors missing out at popular attractions?
Chloe Paver and Matthew Philpotts ask whether
translated materials in German museums could do better
A
black and white photograph from the 1930s
shows a young boy proudly clutching an out-
sized paper cone. It serves as a lead image for
one of the Jewish Museum Berlin's excellent online
exhibitions. In the English version of the accompanying
text, the Zuckertüte becomes 'a cone full of candy', a
translation of the object's material function rather than its
cultural associations. In the German-speaking world, a
Schultüte is given to children on their first day at school;
the ritual is not complete until a photo is taken of the new
schoolchild proudly, or anxiously, clasping the Tüte.
To a German viewer, the photograph therefore signals
the self-evidence with which this Jewish-German family
occupied its place in German society – an effect
heightened by the motif printed on the paper cone:
kitsch images of a boy and girl in decidedly non-Jewish,
Bavarian dress. Today, #Schultüte and #ersterSchultag are
popular Instagram hashtags. This continuity of cultural
practice invites the German viewer to relate the Jewish
boy's experience to the here and now: What would the
social exclusion of a schoolchild mean today?
Along with other examples from history museums, the
Schultüte got us thinking about what translation does at
the museum and, more intriguingly, what it does not do
and what it might be able to do. Like subtitling and
dubbing, museum translation sets necessary but artificial
restrictions on word-length and format. An exhibition
board is not the place for lengthy glosses, or for
contextual information about social values and practices.
Exhibition texts in English also have to work for a global
tourist audience, which means that finding UK or US
comparators is not necessarily an option.
Our academic work, being carried out at the universities
of Exeter and Liverpool, focuses on museums about
TOURIST
ABSTRACTION
JEWISH MUSEUM
Unlike other museum
architecture in
Germany, the concept
for the Jewish Museum
Berlin building is
explained to visitors in
English and German.
However, historic
cultural artefacts
that are instantly
recognisable to German
visitors are not always
described for tourists
