Abstract This paper aims to demonstrate the implications of health mobility on language practices in the medical tourism industry in India and on the ways, language workers become entrepreneurs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork that traces the trajectories of three former students of Russian, we highlight their future aspirations as language learners and entrepreneurs and show, how they attempt to capitalize on language skills and respond to changing conditions and patient movements within the structures, constraints and uncertainties of the linguistic market. Here, it is our aim to illustrate what it takes to become an enterprising and successful language worker and at the same time highlight their current positioning as emblematic yet subordinate figures within a fast-growing service industry in an emerging economy. We further demonstrate, how language skills not only become commodities to serve existing or future markets, but instead are recast as tools that can be strategically employed to secure recognition and access to prestigious and lucrative professional networks. In doing so, this paper illustrates how linguistic value is produced in a service industry that to date only received little attention in sociolinguistic research.

中文翻译：

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语言，医疗旅游和进取心

摘要本文旨在证明健康流动对印度医疗旅游业中语言习惯的影响以及语言工作者成为企业家的方式。我们从民族志田野调查中追溯了三位俄罗斯前学生的轨迹，我们着重介绍了他们作为语言学习者和企业家的未来抱负，并展示了他们如何尝试利用语言技能并应对不断变化的状况以及患者在结构，约束和条件下的运动。语言市场的不确定性。在这里，我们的目的是说明成为一名进取和成功的语言工作者所需要采取的行动，同时强调他们当前在新兴经济中快速发展的服务行业中作为标志性但从属人物的地位。我们进一步证明，语言技能如何不仅成为服务于现有或未来市场的商品，而且被重新铸造为可以在战略上用于确保知名度和利润丰厚的专业网络的工具。这样做，本文说明了迄今为止在社会语言学研究中很少受到关注的服务行业如何产生语言价值。