Abstract
BackgroundApproximately 21% of the US population speaks a language other than English at home; many of these individuals cannot effectively communicate in English. Hispanic and Chinese Americans, in particular, are the two largest minority groups having low health literacy in the United States. Fortunately, machine-generated translations represent a novel tool that non-English speakers can use to receive and relay health education information when human interpreters are not available.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of the Google Translate website when translating health information from English to Spanish and English to Chinese.MethodsThe pamphlet, “You are the heart of your family…take care of it,” is a health education sheet for diabetes patients that outlines six tips for behavior change. Two professional translators translated the original English sentences into Spanish and Chinese. We recruited 6 certified translators (3 Spanish and 3 Chinese) to conduct blinded evaluations of the following versions: (1) sentences translated by Google Translate, and (2) sentences translated by a professional human translator. Evaluators rated the sentences on four scales: fluency, adequacy, meaning, and severity. We performed descriptive analysis to examine differences between these two versions.ResultsCronbach's alpha values exhibited high degrees of agreement on the rating outcome of both evaluator groups: .919 for the Spanish evaluators and .972 for the Chinese evaluators. The readability of the sentences in this study ranged from 2.8 to 9.0 (mean 5.4, SD 2.7). The correlation coefficients between the grade level and translation accuracy for all sentences translated by Google were negative (eg, rMeaning=-.660), which indicates that Google provided accurate translation for simple sentences. However, the likelihood of incorrect translation increased when the original English sentences required higher grade levels to comprehend. The Chinese human translator provided more accurate translation compared to Google. The Spanish human translator, on the other hand, did not provide a significantly better translation compared to Google.ConclusionGoogle produced a more accurate translation from English to Spanish than English to Chinese. Some sentences translated by Google from English to Chinese exhibit the potential to result in delayed patient care. We recommend continuous training and credential practice standards for professional medical translators to enhance patient safety as well as providing health education information in multiple languages.
Highlights
Health promotion and education material from health organizations, as well as mass media, are primarily written and delivered in English
The Chinese human translator provided more accurate translation compared to Google
The Spanish human translator, on the other hand, did not provide a significantly better translation compared to Google
Summary
Health promotion and education material from health organizations, as well as mass media, are primarily written and delivered in English. As a result of their lack of comprehension and/or misinterpretation, LEP individuals (1) spend extra time and money seeking and using health care services, (2) have unsatisfactory experiences with health care providers, (3) make inappropriate health decisions, (4) have limited access and use of preventive health care services, (5) are more challenging to recruit into health education programs, (6) take incorrect dosages of medication, and (7) have worse health status [6,7,8,9,10,11] These issues become increasingly important to address as the LEP population in the United States continues to steadily grow. Machine-generated translations represent a novel tool that non-English speakers can use to receive and relay health education information when human interpreters are not available
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