Article published In: Museums as Spaces of Cultural Translation and Transfer
Edited by Sophie Decroupet and Irmak Mertens
[Babel 70:5] 2024
► pp. 615–636
Visitor experience as translation
Intertextuality and identity in experiences of an American Chinese museum
Published online: 13 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00397.nea
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00397.nea
Abstract
This paper explores the museum visitor experience as a form of translation. It argues that if a given exhibition can be seen as a cultural translation, then it is also true that the visitor’s reading of that exhibition constitutes a further layer of translation, as the visitor enacts their own transformation of the culture on display. The paper draws on intertextuality as a means to understand the ways in which this transformation occurs. It delineates a three-level typology of intertexts employed by the visitor and considers how the use of such intertexts constructs the visitor’s positionality in regard to the exhibition. The paper focuses on data from a diasporic museum, the Museum of Chinese in America, and applies a methodology involving analysis of TripAdvisor reviews and post-visit diaries to the online museum. The paper concludes that diaspora museums are a case in which the particular nexus of identity issues at work provide a more complex view of the visitor experience as translation.
Résumé
Cet article explore l’expérience du visiteur de musée en tant que forme de traduction. Il soutient que si une exposition peut être considérée comme une traduction culturelle, il est également vrai que la lecture de cette exposition par le visiteur constitue un niveau supplémentaire de traduction, dans la mesure où le visiteur met en œuvre sa propre transformation de la culture exposée. L’article s’appuie sur l’intertextualité comme moyen de comprendre les manières dont cette transformation se produit. Il contient une description d’une typologie des intertextes employés par le visiteur à trois niveaux, avec une réflexion sur comment l’utilisation de ces intertextes construit la positionnalité du visiteur par rapport à l’exposition. L’article se concentre sur les données d’un musée diasporique, le Museum of Chinese in America, et applique une méthodologie impliquant l’analyse des avis TripAdvisor ainsi que des journaux de visite du musée en ligne. L’article conclut que les musées de la diaspora sont un cas dans lequel le nexus de questions identitaires en jeu offre une vision plus complexe de l’expérience du visiteur en tant que traduction.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Approaching visitor experience as translation: Memory, identity and intertextuality
- The Museum of Chinese in America
- Methodological considerations
- Mapping the intertexts
- Meshing of intertexts in the tripadvisor reviews
- Intertexts and identity in the visit diaries
- Conclusion
References
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