The surge in migration is bringing about
an increase in racial and cultural diversity in many parts of the world. Take
the United States, for example, with its 350 spoken languages. Or
Australia, where one-fifth of its citizens speak another language aside from
English.

Have we all ever taken a step back to
observe how this diversity impacts healthcare delivery? Especially as the
global pandemic continues to rage on. It has now become glaring to all that any
section left behind can become a threat to every other stakeholder.

The critical question now becomes: How
can we improve healthcare delivery for the minorities in a diverse population?

While there are multiple solutions to the
question, we want to place our focus on the segment that is relevant to us,
which is — through quality translation. And that is what we would be exploring
in this post.

How does translation impact healthcare?

We all can agree that communication
between all interested parties is a crucial component to quality healthcare
delivery, so when dealing with a culturally or linguistically diverse set, it
is only natural for a form of language exchange to occur.

In some of these scenarios, translation
is required in medical texts — consent forms, patient records, clinical trial
records, medical equipment manuals, just to mention a few. While other
scenarios may involve interpretation from one language to another to convey
information between a patient and their healthcare provider.

All these scenarios put together have the
end goal of improving the quality of healthcare to relevant stakeholders.

Whatever the case may be, let us be quick
to point out that there is a strict need for a high level of precision in all
of these services due to the fact that life-threatening issues can occur if
errors are present.

This level of precision does not
originate from the ordinary translation or interpretation of the languages
involved but from a comprehensive QA process. The entire language exchange
process needs to pass through a rigorously designed quality-assurance procedure
in order to produce the best results.

Clearly, translation and interpretation
services help eliminate language barriers, thus enhancing healthcare inclusion
for the linguistic minorities, which goes a long way in improving public
safety.

For more information, check out our post on quality assurance in
medical translation.

The role of translation technology in healthcare

As we have already established that
translation positively impacts the general state of healthcare, it is only
logical for technologies associated with translation to do the same.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this
impact is through the way these technologies have helped in navigating the
pandemic era. For starters, real-time interpretation services through the phone
or virtual set-ups have helped to deliver the same required assistance that
one-on-one services provide while at the same time eliminating the risk of
participants getting infected.

We all have also witnessed instances
where AI and machine learning technologies have assisted in delivering faster
translations of global research findings regarding the pandemic.

Telemedicine and other translation
technology-related trends are emerging as the new norms in the healthcare space
as the world gradually emerges from the effects of the pandemic. And we predict
that they will play more significant roles with time.

Wrapping up

The delivery of all-inclusive healthcare
is perhaps the quickest way to overcome this global pandemic. And when it comes
to catering to the cultural and linguistic minorities of any region, language
services providers play a critical role
through translation and interpretation services.

Finally, emerging trends show that
translation technologies would play significant roles in improving clinical outcomes of patients going forward.