Challenges within the ecology of multilingual interactions in Aboriginal cultural tourism in Central Australia

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the sociolinguistic issues raised by multilingual language use and interpreting in tourism services in a key Aboriginal-owned culturally significant site: Uluru in Central Australia. It reports on a project which investigated the challenges presented by different modes of foreign-language tour guiding, commenting on the accuracy, cultural appropriateness and semantic nuances of information given to visitors in different languages. It documents the complexities of this multilingual situation and discusses how the challenges are met from the perspective of ideologies about language, different understandings of interpreting and translation, and the nature of cross-linguistic interaction.