Health Care Language Revisited

In one of my previous posts I discussed the language barrier that doctors face within the United States due to the large diversity in language. In class and in my post we talked about the security that patients feel when they discuss their health problems in their own language. In the field of health it is crucial for the patient to be able to expound upon their symptoms and be sure that the doctor understands them in order for a correct diagnosis to be made. In the United States where doctors are expected to speak English, the language barrier usually shows up when a non-English speaking patients arrives. However, in Britain the latest problem is when the doctor doesn't speak English.

This doctor-patient language barrier, obviously, would be more common in Europe where each country is much closer together and speaks a different language. Interestingly, however, the EU does not seem to mandate that doctors working in a different country be fluent in that countries language. According to this article in the Telegraph, though their are language proficiency tests in place, there are ways for doctors to bypass them if they don't pass. Most recently Britain has been pushing for the EU to change their policies. This contention was catalyzed by the death of a patient, David Gray in Britain at the hands of a German doctor. Gray died due to an overdose of painkillers, which were administered due to a miscommunication that was blamed on the language difference. Later reports revealed that the doctor had failed an English proficiency test but was still allowed to practice in Britain. This was his very first shift there.

This is a very really and scary example of the difficulties that the language barrier presents in the medical field. Even today, Britain is unable to conduct proficiency exams on doctors from the EU, although they are able to test any other foreign doctor that wanted to practice in the country. This discrepancy ended up costing many lives along with Mr. Gray's. The Health Secretary has promised to pass new laws mandating proficiency tests if the EU does not reform this policy. I think that Britain should be well within their rights to ensure the quality of patient care by conducting proficiency tests. It has been more than a year since Mr. Gray's death and the matter has not been resolved. When lives are on the line the government and EU should find a quick way to resolve the matter instead of stalling.

Amazon's Latest Venture

On May 18th Amazon's news release revealed their new venture, AmazonCrossing. This new branch of the company is dedicated to publishing translated books. This goes hand in hand with their Kindle which has provided a great new way to read books. Reading this article reminded me of our initial translations attempts with the Bible. What I struggled with most was choosing the correct words to convey the sense that I received from those few short passages. Similarly, I imagine one of the greatest difficulties translating a novel is conveying the style of the writing while trying to stay true to the story. Nicholas Elliott, a translator that works with Amazon now says, "To be responsible for delivering someone's style--i.e. someone's voice-- to a new audience is daunting".When it comes down to it there definitely won't be a direct way to translate all metaphors or images into a different language while translating. This especially seems to be pertinent in the translation of poetry. Recently I read some Baudelaire poems, which others in the class might have as well if they are in Epic Journeys. Because Baudelaire wrote in French, I was able to roughly read the original poems next to their translations, which I believe were actually done by our professors and their colleagues. Though many of the ideas were translated well into English, the translations lacked a lot of the beauty of the original poems. However, at times this can also go the other way. Baudelaire brought Edgar Allan Poe fame through out France and European when he translated several of Poe's works into French. According to my IHum professor, though English speakers consider Poe a good writer and poet, he is much more highly acclaimed in France. I think this comes down to his translator, Baudelaire. Obviously translation can go either way and despite the risk of bad translations, I think Amazon's new venture will actually be quite successful. For the critics who complain about technology destroying language through text, IM, and email, this is the other side. I believe these translations falls under the benefits-of-technological-advances category. As the world grows and there is more talk of globalization and a global culture, I think small advances like this emphasis on foreign novels is one of the most positive aspects. Though it seems trivial, I think fiction books can reveal the culture of foreign countries very accurately. This can only benefit monolingual English as these books subtly tutor them in other cultures and traditions.

Language Barrier with Doctors

As a follow up to our discussion in class, I read an article written by a doctor in residence in Phoenix, Arizona about the difficulties of not speaking the same language as the patient. We discussed the distrust that many of us would feel if we were unable to communicate effectively with a doctor. Doctors make life changing decisions based on what the patients tell them, which could be dangerous if there is a language barrier and the wrong information comes across. Luckily, the health industry has recognized this problem. The doctor in resident that wrote the article mentions having access to a telephone line that has medical interpreters for dozens of languages. I think this is a crucial resource when we live in such a diverse country and I am definitely not alone in that statement. For example, the Vermont Medical Society has posted that in Vermont law requires translators for non-English speakers. Medical translation companies, as a result, are thriving. A basic google search for such translating companies bring up many useful pages. There are even online sites for medical document translation. I'm really glad to see that there are so many resources to combat the language barriers within the medical field.

The Language of Authority

Lisa Delpit does a lot of work that focuses on education and race. In her book, Other People's Children (1995), there is a specific chapter called "The Silenced Dialogue", which focuses on the debate that  African American children in the USA , though it can be expanded to almost any race, should be taught differently than white, middle-class children. This is not Delpit's own view exactly but she does try to highlight  how this legitimate debate has been silenced without resolution.  I was under the impression that in most cases the brain functions the same, independent of race. While that is probably true, Delpit highlights specific methods that are more effective based on race. While I agree with the validity of the cry for different educational methods for African American children, I reject the idea that it is race that is the dividing factor. Instead it seems to me that different cultural upbringings make different educations methods more effective in one culture versus another. 


Delpit brings up the idea of authority and how it is portrayed in different cultures. Specifically, she focused on how authoritative figures, like teachers, speak depending on the culture they associate with. She introduces a dialogue where the first two sentences are from a middle-class "townspeople" teacher and the second are said by an African American teacher.

- "Is this where the scissors belong?"

- "You want to do your best work today."

- "Put those scissors on that shelf."

- "Put your name on the papers and make sure to get the right answer for each question."


The difference here stems from the use of direct and indirect forms of commands. The first set of commands use the indirect form but because they are said by a teacher they still hold authority, at least to me they do. Growing up in a middle-class, white family this indirect form of speech still gives me the sense of a command. What Delpit illustrates here that I and almost any other middle-class, white student would interpret the first two statements as a command because of the culture we developed in. While the second set of command could seem too direct, even abrasive to us, the first set of commands to someone from the African American culture could convey a lack of authority. Within the classroom if a student is unaware that the indirect commands hold just as much authority in the teacher's eyes as direct commands, often time the student will blatantly ignore the indirect commands. This can be perceived as a blatant disregard of the rules, when instead it is actually a cultural and lingual misunderstanding. This presents an interesting conundrum: How does a teacher address a culturally diverse classroom?


These difference that appear while both teachers are using English. In this case language does not divide the views. However, because there is so much culture attached to different languages, even more differences will come up as one studies how authority figures address others in different languages. These differences, if not understood, can be extremely detrimental to anyone trying to assimilate into a new culture while learning a new language.  

Getting Rid of Chinglish

Shanghai is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish is the title found on the New York Times article about Shanghai's latest movement to correct the entertaining Chinglish signs throughout the city. What I thought would be just an entertaining article, presented some really interesting view points about this latest push for reform. Before the 2008 Olympics Beijing pushed for a similar "clean-up" of Chinglish signs. The government does have a point in redoing these funny signs because many of them don't convey their actual meaning, leaving tourists guessing at the rules. At the same time, however, these signs have created a little culture of their own and give English speakers a glimpse of how Chinese portrays ideas with different phrases.

The article points out that even some of this Chinglish has slipped into every day phrases for English speakers. For example it illustrates that the phrase "long time no see" is a word for word translation of a Chinese saying. Even more interesting, however, was the fact that it is possible to get a degree in Chinglish. That is exactly what Oliver Radtke is doing at the University of Heidelburg and on his blog he tries to collect these Chinglish sayings before they disappear. I think he makes a valid point that these phrases allow others a glimpse into a mindset that is different because of the language difference. Many of these translations were brought about by faulty online translations but they try to convey word for word thoughts in Chinese that don't always transfer correctly to English. While they provide entertainment for tourists, they also should provoke certain analytical thoughts about the origin of the mangles phrase. Honestly the best solution would probably be to fix only the most confusing signs that contain important information. Or, since owners will already have to get new signs, they could leave the Chinglish to provide a different interpretation.

However, in case Chinglish is eliminated here is a funny article that has many pictures and translations of Chinglish signs. Enjoy.

English Only Driver's License Tests Revisited

I just ran across an article in the Salt Lake Tribune that follows my argument that the driver's license test should still be offered in more languages than English. I though it was great to see an argument so similar to mine printed in a newspaper.

New Research on the Brain and Language

Today I ran across an article about new research that focuses on how the brain interprets grammar and inflection in language differently. Since I have not thoroughly studied the brain, I don't really have an argument on whether or not this research is correctly interpreted. However, it seems like the research is pretty clear. Basically the researchers studied the different regions of the brain that were activated when the meaning of a sentence can be understood from the grammatical structure in contrast to when it must be inferred from inflection in the sentence. What they found was that although there are similar regions activated by the two different forms of communication, they produced different patterns of brain activity. The article suggests that this is one of the most distinct reasons humans are able to communicate in a more complex form than animals is due to stronger connections between the different areas of the brain that allow us to interpret the complexities of language. 

To give a better sense of how this study was preformed the article shared some interesting tidbits about how different languages assign the subject, direct object, and indirect object. In English word order is extremely important in assigning these placements to each noun. The subject comes before the verb, the direct object comes after it and the indirect object comes after distinguishing words like to, for or at. However, other languages distinguish the different roles of nouns not through placement but with suffixes or inflection. I'm personally most familiar with Ancient Greek which declines all the nouns. Greek has five declensions. The nominate case takes the role of the subject. The accusative is the direct object and the dative is the indirect object. There are also the vocative and genitive forms that have other meanings. Unlike in English, because Greek attaches specific suffixes to each noun a specific order is not necessary to understand the phrase. Consequently many different forms of sentence structure are commonly used in Greek. Similarly other languages use inflection to give a specific meaning to each noun.

Upon reading this article my first question was how did they actually study this, because it seems like each language exclusively uses one form or the other. However, the original article points out that in Sign Language both grammatical structures are used interchangeably. This study was a success because the researchers used native signers in order to avoid dealing with the complication of testing speakers of different languages. Had no language existed that used a combination of the two structures the researchers would have had to address the uncertainty of whether these differences were associated with the grammatical structures or the languages themselves. Choosing to use only signers really made this an effective study and provided an interesting insight on how the brain interprets language. My only question is, do other languages exist that use both these grammatical structures as well? I feel like to a small extent English uses inflection for emphasis. So is it present in a minimal form in many languages?