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Google Translate app for Androids may help doctors in a pinch

Doctors often encounter language barriers in delivering care, particularly in multi-cultural Canadian cities. Interpreters may be available, but if time is an issue, you may need to deliver care before they can arrive. The free Google Translate app presents a possible solution to this problem. 

As an extension of their widespread integration of speech-to-text throughout the Android platform, Google created a language app centered around a straightforward concept; enter one language, output in another.

While not explicitly a medical app, this functionality could easily be applied in a clinical setting. Without compromising privacy with extra people, the non-english speaking patient would be able to interact directly with their physician and receive accurate and timely care.

The app has a very simple interface. There is a text input field with a speech to text launcher, a language selector, and lists of “starred” favorites and recent translate history.

The app comes with 58 languages, from the commonly-encountered Spanish, Chinese, and Korean to more rare selections like Haitian Creole, Yiddish, and Galician. 
There is also a convenient flip button that changes the source and destination languages. The favorites menu is a great time saver. Once you’ve entered in your own database of history and physical questions in English, they can easily be called up and replayed in any language.

Hitting the speech button brings a pop up that cues the user to speak into the phone. A quick analysis later, and the app displays the translated phrase in text, along with a favorites and playback button.

To truly evaluate the app’s potential, reviewers at iMedicalapps put Google Translate through a field test with a Spanish-speaking patient in an active hospital environment.
At normal speaking tones, Translate had difficulty separating short, monosyllabic words, oftentimes combining two spoken words into one translated word. The app had difficulty marking the beginning and ending of words, oftentimes joining the last half of one with the first half of another. It turned “What brings you into the E.R. today?” into “What turned you into heart attack?”

Speaking slightly louder than conversational volume with a clear pause between words helped Translate fare much better. Translate put out mostly correct grammar and nouns and verbs for the remainder of the interview.

However, the reviewer felt that asking the patient to speak loudly and with word pauses is time consuming, distracting, and unrealistic, especially if they are in acute distress.

Nevertheless, it’s a free tool that may be better than nothing in some scenarios.
The reviewers encourage doctors to conduct their own field tests on Google Translate to get a feel for the app, as Google has big plans for real-time translation and will be vastly improving it in the next few years.

For more information, visit http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-translate-now-for-iphone.html

Posted August 19, 2010