Translation Landscape and Cultural Soft Power in Immigrant Cities: From the Silk Road to the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

[EN] The world is undergoing an accelerated transformation, referred to as a “once-in-a-century change,” in which globalization, global economic structures, international power dynamics, cultural frameworks, and governance systems are experiencing unprecedented shifts. Joseph Nye introduced the concept of soft power, filling a critical gap in realism’s traditional emphasis on military and economic hard power. Major global powers, seek to achieve their strategic objectives and national interests through new forms of power resources and alternative power behavior. Power dynamics have existed as long as human history itself; the ways in which societies define power reflect their value orientations. When translating and introducing the foreign concept of soft power, the term “quanli”-which corresponds closely with the core connotation of “power” was deliberately avoided to prevent the hegemonic implications inherent in Nye’s soft power theory. Instead, “shili” was adopted in mainstream Chinese discourse due to its closer association with “strength,” ultimately elevating the concept to the level of national strategy. Urban cultural soft power has become a crucial extension of the discourse on “cultural soft power”, referring to the totality of attraction, cohesion, inspiration, and resonance generated through the non-coercive utilization of all cultural resources within a city. The “Outward Turn” in translation studies has expanded the boundaries of translation, positioning it not merely as a linguistic act of meaning transfer but as an active interpretative and cultural reconfiguration at a broader ideological and semiotic level. The modern city, in essence, can be understood as an entity “born translated”, a space inherently shaped by linguistic diversity and heteroglossic nature, yet simultaneously conditioned by global capital and power structures. Every urban space is woven together by diverse translational forces, forming a translation space where intercultural exchange, identity construction, and power negotiation constantly take place. Translation reshapes the linguistic landscape of the city. As a socially constructed phenomenon, the linguistic landscape forms an integral part of urban discourse and serves as a direct demonstration of the spatial production of cities. Urban space is neither homogeneous nor neutral; rather, it constitutes a complex site where races, religions, lifestyles, and languages intersect. As early as the Tang and Song dynasties, the transregional movement of merchant caravans, envoys, monks, travelers, and migrant groups along the Silk Road gave rise to unique heterotopic spaces within Chinese cities, forming dedicated immigrant enclaves known as “Fan Fang”. A millennium later, with the deepening forces of economic globalization, marketization, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Yiwu, as the starting point of the New Silk Road, has evolved into a magnet for foreign entrepreneurs and migrant workers. Today, the number of international residents in Yiwu has attracted a vast number of migrant entrepreneurs and laborers, with its foreign population now surpassing local residents, leading to the formation of multiple “multiethnic migrant communities” and transforming Yiwu into a contemporary “New Fan Fang” city. While continuing the historical cross-cultural exchange patterns of the Silk Road era, Yiwu has also evolved into a critical translation site for global migration economies, cultural interactions, and ethnic exchanges. This study takes the translation landscape of five highly mobile and super-diverse multiethnic immigrant communities in Yiwu, which are composed of Han Chinese residents, migrant Chinese ethnic minorities, and transnational groups, as a case study to analyze how translation participates in the production of urban space, functioning as a crucial mechanism for cultural exchange, power reproduction, and social integration. It seeks to understand how these interactions reshape urban spaces, foster dialogue and mutual understanding between cultures, and contribute to the identity construction of both migrant and local communities， Furthermore, it investigates the role of the translation landscape in the construction of urban cultural soft power and explores strategies to enhance the city’s translational capacity. To address these research questions, the study adopts an “Outward Turn” paradigm in translation studies, utilizing linguistic landscape ethnography as a fieldwork approach. Through taxonomic analysis, situational analysis, and moment analysis, the research systematically categorizes, organizes, and examines the collected data, revealing how different social groups engage with translation resources within urban space and exploring the fundamental motivations, socio-political mechanisms, identity negotiations, and linguistic power structures integral to these translational practices. The investigation exposes that Yiwu’s urban space is shaped by a diverse semiotic landscape including signs, sounds, graffiti, architecture, religious rituals, clothing, and cuisine. The process of translation in this space transcends linguistic, dialectal, and multimodal boundaries, creatively using multilingual, multi-semiotic, multisensory, and multimodal resources. New linguistic expressions, emergent discourse patterns, and novel semiotic forms continually surface, reflecting clear translanguaging characteristics. As a historic city with over 2,200 years of civilization, Yiwu’s urban space has been translated into an open residential space, an exotic commercial space, and a space of religious representation. The translation space directly influences the identity construction of immigrant communities, shapes the balance of interests between different social groups, and mediates spatial justice. The co-construction, co-governance, and co-sharing model of multi-ethnic immigrant communities relies on translation to engage diverse groups, facilitate negotiation in spatial governance, and ensure equal rights to spatial representation for immigrants, fostering a shared community identity and enhancing urban cultural cohesion. Yiwu’s translation landscape, rooted in the narrative of urban space, serves as a translational practice of New Cosmopolitanism under China’s Hehe (harmony) values, strengthening the cultural communicative power of the Yiwu model, the Silk Road spirit, and China’s global governance philosophy. At the same time, it effectively counters the “China threat” narrative and challenging external misconceptions about China. The translation landscape also drives the evolution of heterogeneous cultures, serving as a continuous source of creative energy for Yiwu’s urban cultural innovation. All in all, Yiwu’s translation landscape is integrated into social interactions, cultural exchanges, and urban governance, serving both as a unique cultural soft power resource and a key channel for shaping and spreading other soft power resources. Moving forward, translators should cultivate cultural self-awareness, adopting the perspective of a flâneur to observe marginalized, diverse, and hidden spaces while capturing and show the city’s complexity. Translation landscape governance should also be integrated into urban development planning, promoting the establishment of intelligent translation systems and emergency translation mechanisms to ensure a more inclusive and accessible linguistic environment in urban public spaces.