Abstract:

Language issues are related to people’s livelihood and national security. In a multilingual society, the emergency service is one of the key indicators of a nation’s language capacity. This paper, taking the National Language Service Corps and the emergency medical language service in the United States as examples, discusses their missions, motivations, operating patterns, existing problems and challenges of the emergency language service system in the United States. Based on the status-quo of the field, this paper indicates that the U.S. emergency language services have some advantages on one hand and there also exist some draw backs on the other. Meanwhile, this paper puts forward the necessity and feasibility of constructing the national emergency language service in a Chinese context and hopes to provide some implications on the construction of national language service system to better improve the national language capacity.

Keywords: emergency language service; American language service; national security; language competence; system construction

摘要：

语言问题关乎国计民生与国家安全,紧急情境下的语言服务工作是考验国家语言能力的重要指标之一。文章以美国的国家语言服务团和紧急医疗语言服务项目为例,探讨美国紧急语言服务体系建设的动机、运作模式及存在的问题与挑战。美国紧急语言服务项目的经验探索提供了国家紧急语言服务的新思路,协调、整合社会资源,是政府（机构）购买公共服务的典范。然而,该项目较多关注成员的语言水平,忽略了实际的“语言+专业”能力;紧急医疗语言服务人员（译者）的职业素养、语言技能水平、专业背景、客观立场等问题有待改进。具体到我国,鉴于境内多语社区增多、境外公民保护、国家“走出去”战略以及军民融合发展战略的实施不断深入,笔者提出并详细分析了构建我国紧急语言服务体系的必要性与可行性,以期为构建国家语言服务体系与提供国民语言能力提供启发与思考。

关键词: 紧急语言服务, 美国语言服务, 国家安全, 语言能力, 体系构建