Empirical Research on Communication Risk Diagnosis and Professional Chinese Training for Overseas Blasting Safety

To address blasting safety risks caused by language barriers between Chinese and foreign personnel in international blasting projects, this research utilizes an integrated methodology incorporating retrospective case studies, questionnaire surveys, and controlled field experiments to develop a specialized Chinese training system for blasting safety and validate its practical implementation effectiveness. Initially, retrospective analysis was conducted on two near-miss incidents in international blasting projects to identify key risk-inducing factors. Subsequently, a structured questionnaire survey involving 142 practitioners from seven countries was administered to assess risk perceptions and training requirements. Building upon the Chinese for Specific Purposes theory and Situated Learning principles, a Terminology-context-pragmatics' three-tier specialized Chinese training system was developed, followed by the implementation of an instructional pilot program. The findings demonstrate that language-barrier-induced safety risks in international blasting projects are objectively prevalent and widely acknowledged by professionals. Terminology mistranslation and procedural comprehension errors, which together constituted over 70% of the contributing factors, emerged as the dominant causes in near-miss events. Additionally, 96.5% of Chinese management personnel and 88.7% of foreign operational personnel identified insufficient specialized Chinese-language competency as a fundamental project safety concern. The experimental group demonstrated terminology recognition accuracy rates of 92.1% (post-test) and 31.4% (pre-test), and safety procedure situational test pass rates of 86.5% (post-test) compared to 28.3% (pre-test). Significant improvements were observed in the experimental group across terminology recognition, safety procedure execution, and Blasting Safety Management Cognition Scale scores relative to the control group, confirming the training system's effectiveness in enhancing foreign personnel's specialized Chinese competency, safety knowledge acquisition, and operational compliance. This study provides both a language-based solution and empirical evidence for improving safety management in international blasting projects.