Translating and presenting the Troubles Exhibition: creating a shared space through a website

Museums are often regarded as crucial sites to display and disseminate local cultures (Liao, 2018). As one of the important tourism industries, museums are facing access restrictions and a sharp decline in visitors as a result of the recent pandemic. In response, many museums are actively seeking new ways of exhibiting to overcome limitations and present themselves to visitors (Choi & Kim, 2021). For this, translation, as an important tool for multilingual services in museums, to some extent, can help museums meet these challenges. Taking the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland as an example, this paper explains how stories of the Troubles, a period of dark history happening in Northern Ireland, are being told through an online space - a Chinese translation website, and how translation makes it possible to bring voices out of the physical gallery and into a virtual shared space, to help international tourists engage with Northern Ireland’s past and be involve in the ongoing conversation. This paper first gives a brief introduction to the Troubles history in Northern Ireland and the Troubles and Beyond Gallery in the Ulster Museum. Presenting both collective memories and personal stories of the Troubles, the Ulster Museum provides a platform for tourists to learn about the Troubles, share experiences and engage in dialogues. For international visitors with different cultural backgrounds, translation plays a vital role in delivering the narratives (Kim, 2020). Thus this paper then explains how to put the physical gallery into an online exhibition by discussing the Chinese translation of the Troubles and Beyond Gallery produced by the author. This study argues that a translation website provides more possibilities for a museum’s exhibition by creating a shared online space, which helps increase social participation and promote accessibility, as well as meets the expectations of tourists in this post-pandemic world.