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Abstract
This article analyzes the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and space as represented in the Lonely Planet tourist guidebook Canada and in its Italian translation. As one of the first mediating links between tourists and tourist destinations, guidebooks play a crucial role in circulating the imagery of cultures (Gilbert 1999, 283; Callahan 2011, 97; Maci 2020, 177). Significantly, as sites of ideological struggle, their translation poses particular issues when it comes to the representation of historically marginalized cultures, as in the case of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, whose close and enduring relationship with the land has played a crucial role in constructing their own identity (Campbell et al. 2003, 16). While most historians argue that Indigenous Peoples have inhabited present-day Canada from time immemorial (see, for instance, Carter 1999; Campbell et al. 2003; Dickason et al. 2006/2023), others – from a Eurocentric perspective – trace their presence back to a specific time in history, presenting them as the first immigrants (see, for instance, Coates 2004, 34-7). Linking the Indigenous Peoples’ presence in present-day Canada with migration, however, effaces the consequences that they suffered following both the arrival of European colonizers and the later waves of immigration (Monture-Angus 1995; Stasiulis and Bakan 1997; Lawrence 2002; Sharma 2006; Ahluwaia 2012). In light of the ideologies underpinning the representation of Indigenous Peoples, this article will examine – through a Systemic Functional Linguistics approach to translation (Matthiessen 2014) – the transitivity shifts which occur within the experiential mode of meaning that is concerned with how human experience is constructed in a text (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004/2014). This will reveal any shifts in the interpretation offered by the target text, thus shedding light on the relationship between translation and ideology.