A qualified professional healthcare interpreter can make a huge difference in a hospital or clinical dialogue.
According to BBC, while a huge percentage of the population in the UK can speak English or are bilingual English speakers, there is also a significant part that speak community languages that have been brought in by migration and immigration. Most of these community languages are Southeast Asian languages such as Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi and Gujarati. There are also speakers of Cantonese, Polish, Italian, Turkish and Greek.
With more specific numbers, Ethnologue lists some 47 immigrant languages spoken in the UK. Languages with the highest number of speakers include Urdu (400,000), Sylheti (300,000), Yue Chinese (300,000) and Italian (200,000). Other languages listed include Tagalog, Japanese, Hebrew, Vietnamese and Persian.
With these numbers in mind, think about the language challenges in the medical field. During these processes, communication between the patient and the healthcare provider ensues. While one may think that this is a normal happenstance — something that is natural — it can get very challenging if the two people communicating speak different languages.
Healthcare Interpreter
While most non- English speaking patients usually brings someone with them who can help them communicate, or there may be a hospital staff who can speak the language and help interpret for them, studies have shown that non professional or ad hoc interpreters are likely to make more mistakes. Medical interpretation mistakes can lead to misunderstanding, and eventually medical damages and liabilities.
A healthcare interpreter or medical interpreter must not only speak the source and target languages fluently. He or she must also have medical background to be able to understand and accurately interpret technical terms or words that may not have direct translation into the target language.
A trained interpreter also knows that he should keep personal opinions to himself.
A medical interpreter can provide services in various settings such as hospitals, private offices, clinics, nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. They save lives and protect the health and well being of patients, just like medical workers.
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