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It’s obvious that access to quality healthcare goes an extremely long way in bettering a person’s health, but would you really think of language – and the translation of it – as being an essential tool for saving and improving lives? It’s something that might not occur to many people, but having the ability to move between languages not only enhances the sort of medical attention and overall healthcare that’s able to be provided to individuals, but can advance medical research as well. Here, we’ll look at the importance of multilingualism in medicine and why it really pays to approach matters in more than a single language.
Hospitals and Primary Care Facilities
For many of us, the most immediate thing we associate with our health is our access to and experience with medical facilities. When we go to our doctor for checkups or special tests, or to the hospital for emergencies or specific surgeries, we expect a certain level of care and expertise. The thing is, not everyone who visits such establishments speaks the same first language as the attending physician – or indeed any of the other members of staff.
Going to the hospital, especially, can be a scary experience for anyone, but imagine how awful it would be to walk into a hospital where everything was in a language that you either didn’t understand fully or at all. This not only makes the experience for the patient more traumatic, but also makes it harder on the hospital and its caregivers. If a patient doesn’t fully understand policies, then it becomes a virtual nightmare trying to deal with things like insurance, medical history, release forms, and billing. The doctor’s job, whether they’re a primary care physician or emergency room doctor, becomes a lot harder because the patient may not understand the specifics of their medication and continued medical treatment.
With all of this in mind, then, it becomes apparent that some degree of translation creates a better environment for the patience and also ensures better treatment for them. Hospitals and doctor’s offices would benefit greatly from having policies translated in the most common foreign language they deal with, along with signs and other information posted throughout their facilities. Having someone on hand who also speaks a foreign language can be of immense benefit and improve the efficiency, as well as the accuracy of the care given.
Crisis Events:
The world is full of major medical emergencies, often caused by devastating natural disasters. Nepal, for example, recently experienced a major earthquake and subsequent major aftershocks that left thousands dead, and even thousands more injured and/or traumatized. For those responding on an international basis, it’s certainly beneficial to have material to take with you that has been translated into the native language of the nation you’re visiting.
Relying on translators in the field is obviously going to be of great use, but having important medical information, as well as disaster relief information, present in the native language is of great import to the recovery process as well. During such disasters, there’s just as much of an emotional and psychological toll wrought on the populace as there is a physical one. Providing material in the native language that tackles these issues is truly instrumental in providing victims with the psychological building blocks necessary for recovering.
Advancing Research:
Medical translation has many benefits, one of which – and perhaps the most important – is its ability to advance medical research and trials. Medicine is truly an international field, with researchers all across the globe tackling a wide range of medical issues and sharing their findings with researchers and medical professionals throughout the world.
Through translation, medication and treatments recently developed in other nations can be approved for trial runs in other countries, thus expediting the process for achieving cures or better standards of living. Without proper translation, medical professionals, as well as government officials, can’t fully assess the information being provided to them, inevitably meaning that various trials, tests, and experiments can’t occur in countries that speak other languages.
Major research and development regarding serious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and a multitude of cancers take place throughout the world in countries such as the United States, China, and various European nations. While English is certainly a major language, it can’t be expected that every medical researcher is going to speak it.
In any case, the research is obviously going to be done in the native language, which is going to have its own particular nuances and specific medical words and phrases that are unique to that language. The misinterpretation of just one of these words or phrases can lead to anything from stagnation to outright disaster, highlighting the extreme importance of proper translation in the medical field.
