From Dark Tourism to Phoenix Tourism: The Ethics of Cultural Translation in Urban Festivals

广受欢迎的广播4系列节目《Mark Steel‘s in City》将剧情介绍到了梅瑟尔蒂德菲尔和沃尔索尔等不太可能的旅游目的地，通过当地历史、观众的口头证词以及斯蒂尔作为一个不敬的游客自己的滑稽地方感，为每个目的地提供了另一种庆祝方式。斯蒂尔在表达和打破对地方的刻板印象之间走着一条微妙的界线。2013年底，他在当时的英国文化之城--德里-伦敦德里演出，他在演出中描述的有趣的是，不仅德里人民对这个长达一年的节日做出了坚定乐观的回应，而且出租车司机、店主，实际上是任何与斯蒂尔交谈的人，都热情地表达了文化转型的话语。2013年这座城市的经历是从黑暗旅游向凤凰旅游转变的典型例子，实际上，从外部游客方面来说，这一转变对经济的影响是很好的证明。然而，北爱尔兰麻烦缠身的过去并没有从风景中消失。FLeadh Cheoil na héireann(爱尔兰音乐节)也计划于2013年首次在NI(实际上是在德里市)举行，而不是在爱尔兰共和国。虽然音乐节确实在进行，但在德里举办音乐节的相当大的阻力甚至来自其组织机构Comhaltas Ceoltóiriéireann(爱尔兰音乐家协会)的内部，对他们来说，这一爱尔兰文化活动与英国文化之城之间的联系是一个问题。这两个事件体现了当前项目试图探索的伦理紧张关系，即商业驱动的向外部世界投射积极地方感的相互冲突的必要性之间的紧张关系，以及在长期冲突历史之后更复杂的社区驱动的自我塑造之间的紧张关系。这两个当务之急都应该被理解为文化翻译的形式：国家资助的对来自外部的潜在消费者的文化翻译(例如由NI旅游局执行)与来自个别社区内部的愿望或阻力不同地结合在一起，通过跨越NI长期存在的宗派分歧来翻译/转变他们的文化。正如翻译学家劳伦斯·韦努蒂所提出的归化与异化相互交织的理论所阐明的那样，在这两种情况下，翻译都不是意识形态中立的行为。这些本地和全球活动之间的另一个中介层是NI相对较晚但不断增加的种族多样性，自上而下和基层文化组织都在寻求参与。FLeadh和英国文化之城之间的对话为这些互动提供了一个高调的例子，但更能揭示该项目的目标以及可能对该项目和其他活动的未来产生更大影响的是Féile an Phobail(社区节，也称为西贝尔法斯特节)。这项一年一度的活动没有像FLead或文化之城那样受到国家媒体的密切关注或学术关注，但自1988年成立以来，它已经发展成为欧洲最大的社区节日之一，目的是消除人们对西贝尔法斯特是“恐怖社区”的看法。此外，它不断发展的雄心是反映全球和当地社区，这从它与贝尔法斯特少数民族社区和来自爱尔兰以外的国际艺术家的接触中可见一斑。在从黑暗旅游向凤凰旅游的转变过程中，菲勒因此代表了所谓的“GLOCAL”的庆祝潜力，并因此提供了一个案例研究，其潜在应用超越了国家创新的背景，延伸到其他冲突后和殖民后社会，寻求通过“节日化”来改变自己。

The popular Radio 4 series 'Mark Steel's in Town', which takes the stand-up to such unlikely touristic destinations as Merthyr Tydfil and Walsall, offers an alternative celebration of each destination via local histories, oral testimony from audience members, and Steel's own comic sense of place as an irreverent flâneur. Steel walks a fine line between expressing and exploding stereotypical perceptions of place. In late 2013, he performed in 'Derry-Londonderry', the then UK City of Culture, during which performance he described, to the audience's amusement, not only the unflinchingly buoyant attitude of the people of Derry in response to this year-long festival, but also the discourses of cultural transformation that were enthusiastically expressed by taxi drivers, shopkeepers, indeed anyone, it seemed, with whom Steel engaged in conversation. The city's experience in 2013 is the quintessential example of a shift from dark tourism to phoenix tourism, and indeed, the economic impact in terms of external visitors is well attested. Yet N. Ireland's troubled past was not absent from the landscape. The Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann (Festival of Irish Music) was also scheduled to be held in NI for the first time in 2013 (indeed in the city of Derry), rather than the Republic of Ireland. While the festival did go ahead, considerable resistance to its being hosted in Derry came even from within the ranks of its organising body, the Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann (Society of the Musicians of Ireland), for whom the association between this Irish cultural event and the UK City of Culture was a problematic one. These two events embody the ethical tensions that the current project seeks to explore, tensions between the competing imperatives of a commercially-driven projection of a positive sense of place to the outside world, and a more complex community-driven self-fashioning in the wake of a long history of conflict. Both imperatives are to be understood as forms of cultural translation: the state-funded translation of culture to potential consumers coming from outside (as performed by e.g. the NI Tourist Board) combines with, variously, a desire or resistance from within individual communities to translate/transform their cultures through an encounter that crosses NI's long-established sectarian divide. In neither case is the act of translation an ideologically neutral one, as the intertwining processes of domestication and foreignisation theorised by Translation Studies scholar Lawrence Venuti make clear. An additional mediating layer between these local and global drives is offered by NI's relatively belated, but increasing, ethnic diversity with which both top-down and grass-roots cultural organisations are seeking to engage.The dialogue between the Fleadh and the UK City of Culture offers a high profile example of these interactions, but more revealing for the objectives of this project and with the potential for greater impact on the future of this and other events, is Féile an Phobail ('The Community Festival', also known as 'The West Belfast Festival'). This annual event has not been subject to the same national media scrutiny or academic attention as the Fleadh or the City of Culture, but since its inception in 1988, aimed at countering perceptions of West Belfast as a 'terrorist community', it has grown to become one of Europe's largest community festivals. Moreover, its evolving ambition to reflect a global as much as a local community is evident in its engagement with Belfast's ethnic minority communities and with international artists from outside Ireland. In the transition from dark tourism to phoenix tourism, Féile thus represents the celebratory potential of the so-called 'glocal' and, as such, provides a case study with potential applications reaching beyond the NI context to other post-conflict and postcolonial societies seeking to transform themselves through 'festivalization'.