Translation Technology in Accessible Health Communication

A discussion of the design and evaluation of assistive translation technology for a diverse set of vulnerable populations.

Meng Ji (Author), Pierrette Bouillon (Author), Mark Seligman (Author)

9781108837378, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 September 2023

300 pages
23.6 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'This book is an insightful deep dive into the multitude of ways that translation tools can be used to advance health communication. This is a must-read for any individual with an interest in developing or evaluating technologies to address gaps in translation access in the healthcare setting. The authors provide foundational knowledge about the types of technologies available, how they can be applied, and approaches to evaluations. Through case studies, the readers then learn about challenges and opportunities for translation technologies to advance health globally. These wide-ranging examples collated into a single volume demonstrate the potential of these tools to transform communication across language barriers.' Elaine Khoong, MD, University of California, San Francisco

Digital health translation is an important application of machine translation and multilingual technologies, and there is a growing need for accessibility in digital health translation design for disadvantaged communities. This book addresses that need by highlighting state-of-the-art research on the design and evaluation of assistive translation tools, along with systems to facilitate cross-cultural and cross-lingual communications in health and medical settings. Using case studies as examples, the principles of designing assistive health communication tools are illustrated. These are (1) detectability of errors to boost user confidence by health professionals; (2) customizability for health and medical domains; (3) inclusivity of translation modalities to serve people with disabilities; and (4) equality of accessibility standards for localised multilingual websites of health contents. This book will appeal to readers from natural language processing, computer science, linguistics, translation studies, public health, media, and communication studies. This title is available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction Meng Ji, Pierrette Bouillon and Mark Seligman
1. Speech and translation technologies: explanations Mark Seligman
2. Speech and translation technologies: healthcare applications Mark Seligman
3. Predicting errors in Google translations of health information on infectious diseases Meng Ji
4. Cultural and linguistic bias of neural machine translation technology Meng Ji
5. Enhancing speech translation in medical emergencies with pictographs: BabelDr Pierrette Bouillon, Johanna Gerlach, Magali Norré and Hervé Spechbach
6. Improving healthcare accessibility for the deaf: the sign language version of BabelDr Irene Strasly, Pierrette Bouillon, Bastien David and Hervé Spechbach
7. Health websites for all: improving accessibility in website translation and localisation Lucía Morado Vázquez and Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez.

Subject Areas: Artificial intelligence [UYQ]