Modern Social Science Research

This paper investigates the current situation of bilingual construction of 17 municipal government websites in Henan Province, finding that the bilingual website construction is still lagging behind. As an important window for external publicity, neither content selection nor layout design can meet the needs of foreign audiences well. Specifically, the thinking mode of internal publicity is still adopted for external publicity, which leads to insufficient pertinence and fails to achieve the expected results. For example, too much local government information is presented, while information that foreign audiences are interested in is insufficient such as study, tourism, business, transportation and diet. It reflects insufficient investment and lack of talent in the construction of government websites. Therefore, to build municipal bilingual government websites, the strategy for different targeted audiences should be adopted to consider the cognitive characteristics, thinking mode and actual needs of foreign audiences. Language should be accurate and concise, highlighting key information at a glance; The content should be illustrated with pictures or videos, and streaming media technology should be used appropriately; There should be a search box and a bilingual service phone on the webpage to serve the audience.

Government websites; Bilingual construction; External publicity