MB April | Lost in Conversion


Research Corner | A partnership between Macau Business and the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT)


“Almeida Ribeiro Avenue” or “San Ma Lo”: these are different forms used in English language to refer to the same place in Macau, namely the avenue separating the headquarters of the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau from Senado Square. The use of different designations for the same site in Macau is common in English – and in other outside languages – and occurs when translating from, respectively, Portuguese or Chinese. This can make it hard for foreign tourists to navigate Macau, according to a new paper by two researchers from the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT). The problem is further compounded when it involves different writing systems, such as the Roman alphabet used in much of the West, or Korean script.

“The ways local names of places are converted into… languages [familiar to]… foreign tourists can affect their visiting experience,” wrote IFT scholars Suh-hee Choi and Cora Wong Un In. “Various sources providing tourism information on Macau… are inconsistent in their use of the source languages – Chinese, Portuguese or English – and inconsistently utilise different methods” to convert the name of places into other languages, they added.

“The multiplicity of sources of information is counterproductive,” the researchers pointed out. “At least for difficult cases such as Macau, place name conversion for tourists deserves more attention than it has received on the part of tourism managers.”

Their paper, “Toponymy, place name conversion and wayfinding: South Korean independent tourists in Macau”, was published in January in the academic journal Tourism Management Perspectives. It examined the situation of South Korean independent travellers visiting the historic centre of Macau.

The study included in-depth interviews with 15 South Korean tourists to Macau, performed in Korean between April and June 2015. The outcome showed that “they did not enjoy having to deal with several Korean names for the same place, leading them at times to believe that the different Korean names identify different places.”

Hard task

The IFT researchers highlighted in their paper that converting the name of a place into a different language, especially one using a different script, “is more difficult” than it might look at first. “There is no perfect place name conversion that will satisfy all the needs” of tourists, they wrote.

Drs. Choi and Wong pointed out in their study that many names of tourism-related sites had two components: a common name such as ‘church’ or ‘square’; and a proper name such as ‘Senado’. There were therefore two basic – yet imperfect – ways to convert the name of a tourism site into an outside language that also used a different script from any of those tongues, they suggested.

The first method was by transcription – the conversion of the sounds of one language into the script of another one – of both parts of the name of the place (for instance, the Chinese characters ‘土地廟’ can be converted to ‘Tou Tei Miu’ in English by using this method). This system would not indicate to the foreign tourist “the nature of the place (church, etc.) but will make it possible for him to ask for information from a local,” Drs. Choi and Wong explained.

A second possibility involved translating the common noun used in the name of the place and then performing a transcription of the second part of the place name (for instance, ‘Tou Tei Temple’ for the example mentioned above). “This conversion method gives a converted name which is partly [in the foreign language] and partly sounds like the local language,” the researchers wrote.

They added: “The translated part tells the tourist the nature of the place. The conversion might or might not be understood by a local depending on whether or not the transcribed part of the conversion is sufficiently informative (the translated part will not be understood).”

Additional challenges

Even in simple situations, converting the name of a heritage site to an outside language could be of limited use to tourists due to the shortcomings of each conversion method, the researchers noted. “It turns out that in the case of Macau, and undoubtedly in many other destinations, the situation is [made] more complicated” due to the local coexistence of several languages, they added.

For instance, the two main information providers usually relied on by South Korean tourists to the city – the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) and the Korean National Commission for UNESCO – “have chosen to use one source language for the name of some places and another one for the name of other places,” the IFT scholars pointed out. “The same holds for conversion methods.”

Drs. Choi and Wong concluded that MGTO seemed to use Portuguese as the source language for conversion to Korean of names of places associated with the period of Portuguese administration, and “Cantonese for Chinese places”. However, due to the predominance of Cantonese speakers among the Macau local community, “the only conversion that will allow the tourist to be understood is a complete transcription of the Cantonese local name” to their language, the IFT scholars wrote.

The researchers also found that conversions to Korean used by MGTO and the KNCU were not consistent. “For the same place, they might use different source languages and/or conversion methods,” they said. “As a result, a tourist who has consulted both sources can find two completely different names for the same place.”


The researchers

IFT invited assistant professor Suh-hee Choi earned a PhD in hospitality and tourism management from Purdue University, in Indiana in the United States. Her research interests include place branding; place brand management and tourist destination experiences; tourist behaviour; and tourism Internet marketing. Dr. Choi joined IFT in 2013; her previous work experience includes stints as editor for the South Korean edition of the National Geographic magazine and as a researcher at Gyeonggi Research Institute and Seoul National University, both in South Korea.

Cora Wong Un In is an assistant professor at IFT, where she teaches subjects related to the history of Macau, tourism and heritage. Dr. Wong holds a PhD from the University of Waikato, in New Zealand. She joined IFT in 2005. Dr. Wong is a member of the IFT team delivering cultural heritage specialist guide training as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Guide Training Programme in Asia. Her current research covers several areas, including: pilgrimages and religious tourism; cultural heritage interpretation; post-colonialism; tourist travel experiences; tourism impacts; and visitor management.


The paper

Suh-hee Choi and Cora Wong Un In: “Toponymy, place name conversion and wayfinding: South Korean independent tourists in Macau”, Tourism Management Perspectives, Volume 25, pages 13-22, 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.10.007