Every year, hundreds of thousands of college students in the UK choose to take a gap year or a short-term volunteering trip abroad. They dig wells in Africa, build schools in Thailand and save elephants in India.

在英国，每年有数十万大学生会选择休个“间隔年”或是出国进行一次短期的义工之旅。他们前往非洲挖水井、去泰国建学校、到印度拯救大象。

It sounds like a win-win situation in which students broaden their experience by helping others, while locals benefit from their financial support, knowledge and skills.

学生通过帮助他人来增加个人阅历，当地人则能够从他们的经济、知识以及技术支持中获益。这听起来像是一个双赢的局面。

But in recent years, gap year volunteering has come under fire for becoming just a fashion trend.

而近年来，“间隔年”义工因沦为一种时髦形式而饱受抨击。

A video that went viral on YouTube in 2010 best captures the mindset of some gap year volunteers. It’s a three-minute comedy sketch called Gap Yah, in which a young, British, upper-middle class man tells his friend on the phone about his gap year in Tanzania, Peru and Myanmar. All of his experiences result in him “chundering everywhah” (slang for being sick or vomiting) due to drinking heavily every day.

2010年在美国视频网站YouTube上疯传的一段视频很好地捕捉到了一些“间隔年”义工的心态。这是一个名为《Gap Yah》的3分钟喜剧小品，记录的是一个年轻的英国中上层阶级男士打电话向朋友倾诉自己在坦桑尼亚、秘鲁和缅甸的“间隔年”。所有的这些经历都令他感到阵阵作呕，因为他每天都喝得酩酊大醉。

Matt Lacey, the video’s creator, told The Guardian that “It’s a satire on the great number of people who seem to be leaving these shores to vomit all over the developing world.”

这段视频的拍摄者马特•莱西在接受《卫报》采访时说：“大批人离开自己的国家，跑到发展中国家去喝到吐，这着实很讽刺。”

But many volunteers have the best of intentions when they embark on their gap year. Their biggest problem, according to American Daniela Papi, founder of a non-profit organization that specializes in organizing gap year tours, is that they suffer from a superiority complex. Recently, Papi wrote a piece for the BBC sharing her view on gap year volunteering.

但是很多志愿者在着手实施“间隔年”时，初衷是好的。来自美国的丹尼拉•派彼是一家专门从事组织“间隔年”旅行的非盈利组织的创始人。在她看来，这些志愿者所面临的最大问题是他们存在着一种优越感。最近，派彼为英国广播公司BBC撰写了一篇文章，来分享她对“间隔年”义工的看法。

According to her, many Westerners believe that because they come from a wealthy country, they have the right to bestow their generosity and kindness on people in developing countries. But often they know little about the local people and their culture, and lack the necessary skills to help them.

在她看来，很多西方人认为，正因为他们来自富裕国度，所以有权对发展中国家的人民慷慨解囊、施以恩惠。但他们往往对当地的人民和本土文化知之甚少，缺乏施助的必备技能。

“It’s like we think we are all Clark Kent [Superman’s disguise as an office clerk],” Papi says. “At home we work hard to be useful in our jobs, but then we enter a magical phone booth and we take off to a far away country and somehow our Superman suit, or our volunteer T-shirt, gives us all of the power and knowledge we need to save the world.”

“这就像我们认为自己都是克拉克•肯特一样（超人伪装成的办公室职员），”派彼说。“在国内，我们在工作中努力做个有用之人，但当我们如同克拉克一样，走入神奇电话亭，飞到一个遥远的国度后，在某种程度上，我们的超人制服，即志愿者T恤为我们带来拯救世界的力量和知识。”

Volunteering is not about volunteers fulfilling their dream of being a hero, Papi says. “The travelers are not just missing out on learning the lessons that lead to more sustainable changes in themselves and in the world, but they are also often negatively impacting the people they are meant to be ‘serving’.”

“间隔年”义工并非是让志愿者们实现自己的英雄梦，派彼表示：“这些‘间隔年’行者们不仅只是错失了能够带给自身和世界更深远变革的学习机会，也给他们本来的‘服务对象’带来了负面影响。