AN ANALYSIS OF RHETORICAL STRUCTURE AND TRANSLATION IDEOLOGY IN PROMOTIONAL COPYWRITING OF TRAVEL GUIDE ARTICLES ON ONLINE TRAVEL AGENT WEBSITE

This study analyses the rhetorical structure and translation ideology employed in the promotional copywriting of travel guide articles on Online Travel Agent (OTA) websites. The data were collected from 100 data items consisting of 22 travel guide articles published in two languages, Indonesian as the source language and English as the target language, drawn from two major Indonesian OTA platforms, namely Traveloka and tiket.com. This study employed a descriptive qualitative method, with content analysis and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) as the data collection techniques. The rhetorical structure was analysed using the move-based framework proposed by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993), while the translation ideology was examined through the concepts of domestication and foreignization as conceptualized by Venuti (1995). The findings reveal that five rhetorical moves were identified in OTA travel guide articles, with Move 2 (Highlighting the Destination's Appeal) emerging as the most dominant at 52%, followed by Move 3 (Providing Travel Information) at 27%, and Move 1 (Introducing the Destination) at 17%. Meanwhile, Move 4 (Persuading the Reader) and Move 5 (Call to Action) rarely appeared as standalone moves, as persuasive functions tend to be embedded implicitly within the other moves. Regarding translation ideology, the combination of domestication and foreignization constitutes the most dominant pattern, identified in 18 out of 22 articles (81.82%). These findings demonstrate that the selection of translation ideology in OTA travel guide articles is not arbitrary, but is systematically shaped by the communicative function of each rhetorical move.