可能是“望”字。

极有可能。

Probably  望西而行and 往西而行 are semantically the same.

The two phrases basically refer to the same thing, but their tones are different. Besides, the subtitle also showed 往西而行.

Tim

There tones are substantially different... 往 is 阴上 while 望 is 阳上 or 阳去(in Taiwan it should be 阳去, but in Chaoshan both 阳上 and 阳去 exist). However, I'm sure the tones were not shown on the screen, and tone sandhi can affect our identification of the tones used, I guess.

By the way, subtitles are not necessarily identical to what is actually spoken by the characters, at least in Chaoshan, such cases are often found.

Native Peking Mandarin speakers tend to pronounce "新闻"(xīnwén, or shinwen in GR) as "xīnvén", where "w" is replaced by "v". Since "v" and "b" are quite close sounds (at least in Spanish, b and v are simply allophones of a single phoneme), perhaps 往 can undergo the following sound change naturally: uáng-> váng->báng.

The tone I heard after tone sandhi was the first tone and that's why I've been skeptical of that sound.

Typos in the subtitle are also very common in Taiwan.

Tim

It might be possible that it underwent that change. Indeed the v-like pronunciation in 新聞 more often uses the sound of /ʋ/. Some older-style reporters also employ that sound in Taiwan.

Tim

以後會寫中文的都寫中文，我英文不好．

ＴＩＭ是中文輸入法不行，不是不懂中文，沒必要回他的話就用英文．用中文大家都看得懂嘛　．

俺是借和Tim哥对话的机会，偶尔练习一下用英文如何讨论母语相关的学术问题而已。也没有用到很什么的英文啊。鸿雁，你看建辉哥都没什么意见，你前些天还劝他要借学厦门-英字典的时候学英文呢，怎么自个儿却打退堂鼓了？