Translation and Curiosity in the Museum: A comparative study of Theme and Concurrence in source- and target-language museum labels

Museum visitors’ engagement with a label often starts from an initial spark of curiosity about the displayed object, and for many international visitors, engagement with a label means reading a translated text. This case study explores how museum labels direct visitors’ attention towards the objects on display, with a focus on ideational concurrence between visual and verbal content, and the Theme-Rheme structure (Blunden 2020). The case study was carried out at the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan. The study combines a Thematic analysis of museum labels with visitor interviews and investigates whether shifts in translation related to these features could impact how labels encourage visitors’ engagement with the exhibition. The findings suggest that the presence and positioning of ideational concurrence within a translated museum label may either help to convert international visitors’ initial curiosity into enthusiasm and engagement or disrupt their ability to connect with the exhibition content.