Google Translate’s Inadequacies Pose a Risk to Medical Patients
As much as it’s become the go-to tool for translating common terms and phrases, Google Translate doesn’t always get things right. This fact became glaringly apparent when Google Translate was used to translate medical instructions into Arabic, Chinese, German, Spanish, French, and Italian and then back into English once again. Several medical terms were translated incorrectly or left out entirely due to Google Translate’s overreliance on statistical machine translation to convert language.
The benefits of machine translation
Google Translate has been doing a decent job of providing simple translations. However, the reality is that medical terms are more difficult to because their meanings are more intricate and specialized. The language barrier created by using a translation app poses a serious risk to patients from all walks of life. Here’s an example:
*The phrase open the door may bring my book to English when translated with Google for instance.
*If an interpreter misinterpreted these commands, it would have disastrous consequences for the patient’s health condition-this would be even worse if someone were experiencing a life-threatening emergency.
The limits of machine translation
Google Translate is a handy tool to have, but it’s not quite ready for medical documentation. This can have a huge impact on patients, leading to potential harm and complications. So next time you’re reaching for Google Translate to translate instructions, remember that your health and safety depend on the accuracy of this translation tool.
When translating medical instructions or treatment information, it’s important to consider your context. Google Translate is getting better all the time, but it still has many limitations.
For example, translation tools like Google aren’t able to handle complex terminology specific to one industry and rely on general rules of language interpretation that aren’t always accurate in context. This can result in incorrect wording or mistranslations that can lead to potentially dangerous results for patients.
There are other considerations as well—for example, if you’re trying to translate something medical into English from Japanese but you have no understanding of Japanese culture or medical background yourself, it may not be obvious what is meant by certain phrases or concepts.
The use cases where AIs can be useful, despite their shortcomings
Although the limitations of artificial intelligence should not be overstated, there are certain use cases where AIs can provide benefits. For example, patients are often given medical instructions in their native language by doctors and nurses, who might also speak different languages themselves.
Google Translate can transcribe written words from one language to another, which is then recorded and saved to text files. This means a doctor or nurse from any country can communicate in the local language with a patient even if they don’t speak it themselves.
There are, however, two key problems with using AIs in medical situations like these. The first is that human translators are much better at dealing with unstructured language.
This means things like body language, sarcasm, and other non-verbal cues can often be lost in translation, leading to misunderstandings between doctors and patients. The second issue is with data privacy: As most of these conversations are being recorded for future reference by healthcare professionals, it means Google has access to vast quantities of sensitive patient information.
Healthcare professionals’ concerns about AI use: Many believe that relying on Google’s technology will have profound effects on their ability to communicate effectively with patients who speak different languages.
How machine learning can help in the future
Research into artificial intelligence shows promise in predicting what a word or phrase may mean based on the context in which it was used. In the future, these types of programs could be useful for understanding jargon and technical terms that are often present in clinical instruction.
This type of technology will help those of us who don’t speak a language that is frequently used to translate languages like Arabic, Farsi, and Hindi by combining it with machine learning algorithms to understand the context and an estimated meaning of a word or phrase.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a helpful tool right now as many people have stopped using Google Translate because it simply wasn’t accurate enough. Yet as research progresses, we can only hope for the best for future medical patients all over the world.
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