Greece in Translation: (Re)Constructing Online Narratives of Nation and Identity in Tourism and Culture

Abstract

This Dissertation focuses on original Greek and translated English online multimodal texts from the domains of tourism and culture, produced or copyrighted between 2009-2019. It aims to examine possible fluctuations between the two language versions, in order to determine the extent to which translation may be an important reconstructive factor in the process of national identity creation in contemporary Greece. To do so, it engages with narratives and discourses of nationalism and explores the relationship between national identity and discourse within the framework of narrativity and hegemony. After delving into an interdisciplinary literature review which draws on Translation Studies (TS), discourse theory, identity research, branding and marketing studies as well as nationalism theory, textual data is extracted from three high-popularity Greek websites (i.e. Visit Greece, the Acropolis Museum and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), which are available both in Greek (EL) and English (EN) and follow the EL to EN translation process. The analysis carried out follows a Critical Narrative Analysis paradigm, drawing both on Critical Discourse Analysis and narrativity, and focuses on multimodal and textual features. Discussion of results leads to the conclusion that translation does not seem to be a major reconstruction force regarding Greek nation image and identity in the websites studied, as ST and TT narratives are almost identical with only minor fluctuations. Greece is depicted by means of its past and present, while heritage and continuity are core to the identity construction; at the same time, processes of stereotyping, commodification and identity attribution are also evident, as seen in the examples provided. Hence, this study contributes to TS by examining the role of translation in discursive identity construction and by providing an interdisciplinary method of analysis. At the same time, it offers new insights into questions of national identity and nationalism, particularly about Greece.