Translation of signs and the formation of a transnational space: a multimodal study of street signs in the African inhabited areas of Guangzhou

Since the end of the twentieth century, there have been a large number of Africans in Guangzhou occupying multiple emplacements and engaging in diverse activities so that a whole zone of the urban area is designated ‘Little Africa.’ The article investigates the linguistic landscape in the African living areas of Guangzhou from a multimodality perspective, focusing on how street sign translation becomes an important means of cross-cultural communication and a symbol of ‘low-end glocalization’ and ‘grassroots cosmopolitanism’. The translation landscape in the present study was investigated through an ethnographic process of photographing the translations and examining them within their contexts and spaces. The prevalence of bilingual, multilingual, and monolingual English signs in multifarious modes in the African inhabited area of Guangzhou deviates itself from other places of the city to create a translational and transnational space for people of heterogeneous ethnicities to develop social supporting networks and maintain structures of solidarity. The unusually diversified, multimodal translations, on the one hand, reflect the ‘glocalized’ nature of this African enclave while, on the other hand, demonstrating a ‘transient’ sense of belonging for foreigners.