Can Multilingual Machine Translation Help Make Medical Record Content More Comprehensible to Patients? - Zeng-Treitler 2010

More patients can access their own medical records with electronic patient health records. Many patients have trouble understanding medical records. Human translators are prohibitively expensive because each record is unique. In this study, we examined whether multilingual machine translation could assist patients understand medical record text. We used Babel Fish to translate 213 English medical record sentences into Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. We checked the translation's clarity and accuracy. The wrongly translated sentences' text properties were also assessed. In each language, most translations were incomprehensible (76–92%) and/or erroneous (77–89%). Vocabulary and syntax cause translation problems. A general-purpose machine translation tool like Babel Fish isn't appropriate for translating medical records. However, a machine translation technology can be enhanced by targeting particular medical domains.

Zeng-Treitler Q, Kim H, Rosemblat G, Keselman A. Can multilingual machine translation help make medical record content more comprehensible to patients? Stud Health Technol Inform. 2010;160(Pt 1):73-7. PMID: 20841653.