Do We Really Need Foreign Languages In The Romanian Tourism? Some Considerations About The Legitimacy Of Multilingual Competences

At the confluence of philology and economy, foreign languages for business are a more and more interesting domain for the European economic agents, aware of the value of multilingual competences. Tourism is a priority domain of the economy, and within international tourism, foreign languages are a priority. This paper offers an interpretation of the Master Plan for National Tourism Development 2007-2026 from an applied linguistics point of view, aiming to synthesize the role of the foreign languages in the national strategy for the promotion of tourism. The extensive study developed by the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism, the beneficiary of a remarkable professional guidance, offers a realistic image of the Romanian tourism at the time of Romania's integration in the EU and it predicts its evolution over a span of 20 years. The recommendations from the Business Forum for Multilingualism and the ELAN study highlight the impact of foreign languages in business, the direct relation between linguistic competence, performance, profit and development. The research methodology consisted in identifying the accommodation units (hotels and guesthouses) in Oradea, capital city of Bihor county, and Băile Felix, a famous resort situated at about 10 km from Oradea - both of them are situated in the border region with Hungary - and in analyzing their websites. Their on-line presentations are generally made in Romanian, but there is also a concern for the multilingual presentation. This paper intends to sum up the linguistic scene of these websites from the perspective of the orientation to international tourism. We have observed that, despite their indisputable potential to make profit, foreign languages are almost unanimously ignored by officials and by hotel and guesthouse owners alike. Although they are in the private sector, therefore directly interested in the prosperity of their business, they do not choose to apply a strategy of multilingual openness, even though they have personal websites. The languages used are Romanian and English, followed by German, Italian and French. We have tried to find some possible explanations of this phenomenon and to identify solutions. The solutions open the university up to the private sector, with a view to establish a cooperation that would benefit the academic and economic development alike. This paper signals the absence of a national linguistic policy in tourism, which has bad consequences on the local tourism. In the context of internationalism and globalization, the multilingual competences continue to hold a secondary place in international tourism, and this is a paradox. These data will support the pro-multilingualism presentation within a doctoral study carried out at the University of Reims, France, in collaboration with a research team interested in the multilingual management of information, under the coordination of professors J. E. Tyvaert and E. Castagne. The originality of the paper consists in the interpretation of the Master Plan in relation to the linguistic competences and also in the connection between the Master Plan and the linguistic scene of the local promotion of tourism. The data offer theoretical conclusions, as well as practical solutions which can be applied to several foreign languages and in various tourist regions.