Research on the International Image of Hangzhou in the Pre-Asian Games Period: A Case Study on Linguistic Landscape of Liangzhu Area

Abstract

In September 2022, Hangzhou will host the 19th Asian Games, which is another opportunity to facilitate Hangzhou’s internationalization process. A quality linguistic landscape will be of great help for Hangzhou’s internationalization and also serves as a must for foreigners in Hangzhou, so the linguistic landscape of Hangzhou in public services is a topic worth studying. In the “pre-Asian Games” period, the present author investigates the linguistic landscape of Liangzhu area in Hangzhou and tries to explore the communication of Hangzhou’s external image. First, she does a literature review to further understand the global communication of city image and linguistic landscape. Second, in order to understand the foreigners’ views of Hangzhou on its linguistic landscape, especially of Liangzhu area, the present author designs questionnaires, distributes them and conducts in-depth interviews by combining static and dynamic methods. Then, she analyzes the questionnaire and interview data and creates a corpus to extract the views of the interviewees of Hangzhou towards its linguistic landscape. Also, in order to analyze the translation mistakes of public signs in Liangzhu area and its surrounding areas, she conducts a fieldwork and uses professional OCR recognition software and CAT technology to extract, align, analyze, translate and revise the text, trying to figure out the causes of mistakes in various aspects and proposing corresponding countermeasures. Through a case study of the linguistic landscape of Liangzhu area in Hangzhou, the report aims to provide feasible suggestions for the 2022 Asian Games, to offer advice for a better international image of Hangzhou, to contribute “Hangzhou wisdom” to other cities and to promote the international images communication of the surrounding areas.