My in-laws speak very little English, and my attempts at learning Czech haven’t really surpassed a relatively basic level, so at a recent family gathering we tried a couple of voice-activated translation tools to see if they would aid conversation. Whilst the experience was not perfect, it at least allowed for a, somewhat stilted, but nonetheless effective conversation.
Could such tools be reliable enough to power conversations in life and death situations though? That’s what new research from UC San Francisco set out to explore, as they tested the use of Google Translate in a hospital situation.
Accurate discharge
The researchers identified a growing trend for doctors to use Google Translate to provide discharge notes to non-English speaking patients to try and ensure that they follow their home care pathways correctly upon discharge from hospital. The analysis undertaken by the researchers suggested the tool was surprisingly accurate, with 92% accuracy in Spanish and 81% in Mandarin.
What’s more, a small percentage of the errors made by the tool had the potential to be dangerous to the health of the patient. These errors were mainly due to either grammar or typographical errors in the original English instructions, hence a patient reading the original discharge notes would also have struggled with.
“Google Translate is more accurate than a lot of clinicians believe, and I think it’s definitely more useful than not providing anything at all,” the researchers say. “We cautiously support its use.”
Some of the biggest challenges for the tool revolved around the use of colloquial terms, such as skipping a meal, which Google tended to translate literally. Whilst this misunderstanding has humerus connotations, a more harmful misunderstanding occurred when Google got confused by an instruction to ‘hold the kidney medicine’ (meaning to stop taking it). In both Spanish and Mandarin, Google translated this as keep taking the medication, an instruction that could have been life threatening.
Medical jargon
Medicine is also renowned for the level of jargon used, and this was another area that Google struggled with. For instance, the tool struggled with long and complex sentences, such as “Please return to the emergency department for worsening abdominal pain, inability to eat or drink due to vomiting, bloody diarrhea, if you pass out or any other concerning symptom.”
Both Chinese and Spanish translations suffered to digest such a complex sentence, but whilst their attempts were clinically incorrect, they were not deemed to be life threatening.
“It confused the machine because the sentence structure was so complicated,” the researchers explain. “It’s certainly an argument for doctors to check themselves when they are writing instructions. We get used to communicating in these very complicated sentences.”
The team believe that Google Translate, and other tools like it, can be an effective addition to the hospital toolset, but are best used in partnership with human interpreters, who can effectively interpret the verbal instructions given to the patient by the physician, whilst the physician is showing the patient the written translation. By working in this way, it’s possible for the patient to flag up confusing or incorrect segments and obtain clarification.
It’s also recommended that both English and native language instructions are given, as it’s likely that the patient has a family member that speaks English and can provide that added layer of interpretation.
The tools are certainly better than giving the patient no translations at all, and the quality of the translations are improving all the time. They’re likely to be an increasingly valuable tool to help doctors navigate the multicultural world we increasingly live in.
