Owners of new businesses in Chinatown and other mostly immigrant neighborhoods, where for decades merchants have had awnings in their native language, may soon have to change.

A member of the City Council, Tony Avella, Democrat of Queens, plans to introduce a bill to require any new business signs to be at least half in English.

Mr. Avella said yesterday that the Council was hammering out the final details and he hopes the measure will be introduced within a few weeks. His rationale is that in a crunch the regulation would help emergency responders locate businesses and that the signs would be more welcoming for English-speakers.

The proposal, however, is already drawing criticism.

The director of City University’s Dominican Studies Institute, Ramona Hernandez, said the requirement would infringe on the way immigrants carve out cultural identities and create pockets of diverse neighborhoods.

“Something like this would definitely send the wrong message,” Ms. Hernandez said yesterday during a phone interview.

In many cases, she said, the words on the signs are proper nouns, such as names of cities in home countries, that cannot be translated, or phrases that do not have English equivalents.

Council Member John Liu, who represents the largely Korean-American and Chinese-American area of Flushing, sees no need to legislate the issue. It is more of a misperception than an actual problem, Mr. Liu said.

In 2003, Mr. Liu created a neighborhood task force because some civic groups, which are made up mostly of longtime residents who are not Asian, were complaining about the same matter. What the task force found, Mr. Liu said, was that 95% of 300 businesses surveyed on the drag of Northern Boulevard between Main Street and 162nd Street did, in fact, have an address and other information displayed in English.

Mr. Avella’s proposal would take it a step further. It would mandate not just the business name and address, but also that any foreign-language words on a new awning or sign also appear in English.

The council member referred to a little-known state law – Section 131 of the General Business code – that requires that a store have its name in English. The provision, which he said dates back to the early 1900s, is rarely enforced.

Mr. Avella said he is sure some people will view his proposal as “racist.” He said it is not. Rather, he said, it is an attempt to bring different groups together.

Getting traction on his measure won’t be easy. It is unlikely that the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, will support it, let alone push for it.

“While there is no bill in front of the Council, the speaker wouldn’t be supportive of the idea because it places too much undue burden on businesses throughout the city,” Mr. Miller’s chief spokesman, Stephen Sigmund, said.

Mr. Sigmund used the example of the French-named cafe Au Bon Pain, suggesting the measure could also be confusing. Others at City Hall wondered about restaurants such as Rosa Mexicana on the Upper West Side and establishments that use a name precisely because it is in another language.

The president of the Asian American Business Development Center in Chinatown, John Wang, said he had no knowledge of the legislation but that the concept was “good business practice.”

“I think any business would be interested in having more customers,” he said during a brief phone conversation yesterday. “It would make it more convenient for people to identify what kind of business they are operating.”

Mr. Liu said the same about increasing customer traffic, but he said changes should be made by talking to people and raising awareness, not by changing laws.

Council Member Alan Gerson, who represents Chinatown and other parts of Lower Manhattan, said there are signs in Yiddish, Hebrew, Italian, and other languages throughout his district and the city. He said he would have to study the issue before deciding.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office, Jordan Barowitz, said Mayor Bloomberg does not comment on proposals before they are introduced.