The quality of institutional tourist translations from the perspective of French tourists

Abstract

The relevance of Spain as a tourist destination is unquestionable. Given the dependence of the country on this sector, the question arises as to whether public institutions, in particular tourist offices, offer quality information to foreign visitors. In this study, we will focus on tourists from France, which, according to INE (Spanish Statistical Office) data, is one of the three main countries of residence of the tourists who visit Spain the most. In this way, we will be able to answer the following question: do tourist offices provide them with information in their language, and is the information of sufficient quality to be understood by a native speaker? With that purpose in mind, a survey was carried out among 244 people with three objectives: to find out how they use tourist offices, to discover how satisfied they are with the information they received translated into French, and to detect what factors they consider determining whether a tourist translation is of high quality.