Multilingual guided interpretation mechanisms for foreign tourists in living museums: A case study of the Konigil Tourism Village in Samarkand

Abstract

Living museums, which leverage authentic cultural settings to facilitate the living transmission of cultural heritage, serve as a crucial medium for cultural and tourism dissemination along the Silk Road. Multilingual guided tours, in particular, constitute a pivotal tool for cross-border tourists to gain cultural insights and disseminate knowledge about heritage sites. This study takes the Living Museum of Konigil Tourism Village in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, as a case study. Utilizing field research and textual analysis methods, this paper examines the current state of multilingual guided tour services for foreign tourists at this site and identifies existing challenges, including uneven language coverage, homogeneous content, insufficient cross-cultural adaptation, and fragmented service systems. The study then constructs a four-dimensional operational framework for multilingual guided tours – comprising “language provision，content adaptation，scenario implementation，feedback optimization” ，and proposes optimization strategies: precise language allocation, cross-cultural content reconfiguration, integration of immersive scenarios, and closed-loop service optimization. The findings offer practical references for enhancing foreign-language guided services in Silk Road living cultural tourism villages, boosting international communication efficacy, and facilitating the cross-border dissemination of cultural heritage.