Critical MT praxis: Machine translation and tourism slogans in Latin America

Abstract

Tourism slogans are cultural invitations, often the first words international travelers encounter. Increasingly, that encounter is mediated by free MT tools such as Google Translate, DeepL, and Microsoft Translator. This pilot study asks a focused question: do these systems carry not only meaning but also persuasive tone? We propose Critical MT Praxis, combining Baker’s taxonomy of translation shifts with an affective semiotic lens. Forty Latin American tourism slogans were translated across three engines and compared with human benchmarks. Each output was evaluated for fidelity, shift patterns, and persuasive effect. Results reveal a consistent split. While 52.5% maintained high fidelity, many showed flattened tone, literalism, or culturally misleading cues. DeepL generated the most natural outputs. Google and Microsoft varied, often reducing tone or mishandling idioms. These patterns show that tonal drift and lexical imprecision weaken persuasive force. The study argues that translation quality in tourism cannot be reduced to accuracy alone. Emotional resonance remains central to how destinations are represented and received.