Description
Even though communication across different languages is essential for successful intercultural communication and negotiation in international tourism, the increasing globalization of the travel industry makes it unlikely that an individual acquires sufficient knowledge in all the languages either as a host or as a guest. In addition, human translators are not at hand in all situations, and they imply costs. Hence, machine translation (MT), i.e., automatic translation, is a viable alternative in many situations. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to a rampant evolution in the field of human translation. Yet, despite the impact of this technology on society, the use of MT in the tourism sector has been scarcely analyzed.
In this article, we aim to analyze the role of MT in tourism-related intercultural and interlinguistic communication through the lens of Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT). According to CAT, individuals adjust their communication with their interlocutors in each context to manage comprehension, identity concerns, and the desired level of social distancing (Giles & Noels, 2012). To establish connections and accommodate to others, individuals use various communication strategies, such as convergence, divergence, or maintenance. In service encounters, when customers do not share the same native language, accommodation can occur by means of the host’s language, the guest’s language, or a lingua franca, such as English (Goethals, 2014). Previous studies have revealed that when the linguistic repertoire is not sufficient for accommodation, affective accommodation motives may become more important than cognitive ones (Dragojevic et al., 2016) since language has “emotional connotations for consumers that go beyond mere communication” (Holmqvist, 2011, p. 178). CAT has been used mostly to examine communication between humans, and also to explore communication between humans and machines (Gallois et al., 2016). However, how MT affects communication accommodation in service encounters is still a gap ripe for research.
Although the benefits of MT for short transactional communication have been recognized (Liebling et al., 2020), other studies have considered that the success of MT in enabling communication in the service context is ambiguous (Panayiotou et al., 2020). Inaccuracies in translating dialects or accented speech (Liebling et al., 2020), especially in the presence of background noise, are some of the limitations identified. Latency in translation and loss of visual contact due to engagement with a screen may pose obstacles to meaningful interactions beyond transactional communication and inhibit spontaneous interactions (Liebling et al., 2020), leading communication to become robotic.
The present study aims to build upon CAT to analyze the role played by MT in communication accommodation in service encounters in hotel settings. It seeks to answer the following research questions: a) How is MT used in service encounters in the hotel context?; b) What is the role played by MT in communication accommodation in this context, concerning both cognitive and affective accommodation?
This study has followed a qualitative multi-method approach. Data collection has involved several phases: i) seven semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts in several fields related to MT and/or tourism, including both academic and business experts in translation, computational linguistics, machine translation, artificial intelligence, and tourism; ii) in-depth interviews with 24 front-office employees and six managers in four and five-star hotels in Lisbon (Portugal) and Barcelona (Spain). Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software has been used for qualitative data analysis.
This study will contribute to: i) generating a better understanding of how MT technologies support successful communication in service encounters; ii) identifying advantages, risks, limitations, and drawbacks of MT-mediated communication; and iii) promoting MT literacy and appropriate use of MT tools; and iv) providing directions for how MT technology could further develop to satisfy businesses and employees’ needs.
References
Dragojevic, M., Gasiorek, J., & Giles, H. (2016). Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory. In H. Giles (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities Across Contexts (pp. 36–59). Cambridge University Press.
Gallois, C., Gasiorek, J., Giles, H., & Soliz, J. (2016). Communication Accommodation Theory: Integrations and New Framework Developments. In H. Giles (Ed.), Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities Across Contexts (pp. 192–210). Cambridge University Press.
Giles, H., & Noels, K. A. (2012). Communication Accommodation in Intercultural Encounters. In L. Chen (Ed.), Culture, cultures and intercultural communication: A cross disciplinary reader (pp. 139–148). Shanghai Foreign Languages.
Goethals, P. (2014). La acomodación lingüística en contextos profesionales turísticos. Un enfoque didáctico basado en los testimonios de turistas. Ibérica, 28, 181–202.
Holmqvist, J. (2011). Consumer language preferences in service encounters: a cross‐cultural perspective. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 21(2), 178–191. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604521111113456
Liebling, D. J., Lahav, M., Evans, A., Donsbach, A., Holbrook, J., Smus, B., & Boran, L. (2020). Unmet Needs and Opportunities for Mobile Translation AI. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376261
Panayiotou, A., Hwang, K., Williams, S., Chong, T. W. H., LoGiudice, D., Haralambous, B., Lin, X., Zucchi, E., Mascitti-Meuter, M., Goh, A. M. Y., You, E., & Batchelor, F. (2020). The perceptions of translation apps for everyday health care in healthcare workers and older people: A multi-method study. Journal of clinical nursing, 29(17-18), 3516–3526. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15390
