The double-edged sword of language: empowerment and precarity for interpreters in a Chinese border hospital
-
Jia Li
,
Mengyi Luo
and
Jie Zhang
Abstract
China’s borderlands represent an ideal space for examining the ways in which multilingualism is socially experienced, enacted and exploited. This critical ethnography examines the lived experiences of five Vietnamese-Mandarin interpreters at a Chinese hospital bordering Vietnam. Drawing on the concept of alternative language regimes, we demonstrate that Vietnamese proficiency, while creating a crucial niche for employment and mobility, simultaneously functions as a mechanism for entrenching precarity. Specifically, Vietnamese proficiency provides interpreters with a competitive edge in securing a job and maximizing cross-border mobility. However, the convertibility of Vietnamese language remains largely speculative, which entails a high degree of self-investment and precarious forms of labor. We argue that Vietnamese as an alternative language regime relegates interpreters to a highly uneven distribution of symbolic and material precarity in the cross-border medical market. The study offers a nuanced understanding of how language functions as both a resource and a site of constraint within the geoeconomic dynamics of China’s evolving borderlands. It contributes to the emerging scholarship on alternative language regimes in regulating migrant labor and distributing medical resources in the China-Vietnam borderlands and beyond.
摘要
中国边境地区是探究多语现象的社会体验、实践与利用机制的理想场域。本文采用批评民族志方法,深入剖析五位越南语 – 汉语译员在中越边境中国医院的多语实践经历。基于替代语言秩序这一理论视角, 本研究揭示越南语能力的双重作用, 即越南语能力在为译员创造就业机会和提升跨境流动性的同时, 也成为加剧其职业不稳定性的机制。 具体而言, 越南语能力虽为口译员带来求职与跨境流动的竞争优势, 但其实际转化价值仍具高度不确定性, 这导致了译员需大量的自我投入, 并陷入不稳定的劳动形态之中。 我们认为, 作为一种替代语言秩序, 越南语使译员在跨境医疗市场中, 深陷象征性与物质性层面高度失衡的困境。本研究细致阐释了在中国边境地缘经济动态演进中, 语言如何同时发挥着资源和束缚的双重作用。 本研究为理解替代语言秩序在中越乃至更广泛边境地区规约移民劳动和配置医疗资源方面的作用, 提供了新的学术视角。
Funding source: National Social Science Fund of China
Award Identifier / Grant number: 22BYY064
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Prof. Jie Dong and her team from Tsinghua University for their earlier comments. We are also grateful to two reviewers and Jürgen for their very insightful comments on this article.
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Research funding: This study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (project number: 22BYY064).
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