‘Do you have a stick in your mouth?’– use of Google Translate as an aid to anaesthetic pre‐assessment

According to the 2006 Labour Force Survey by the Office for National Statistics, 6% of the adult UK population speak a language at home other than English 1. Patients who do not speak English may have access to family members, staff or interpretation services to aid communication, but errors in medical interpretation still commonly occur 2. Many anaesthetic encounters with patients either require immediate action/consent, or occur out of hours, when translation services may not be immediately available. With the widespread uptake of handheld mobile phones that now incorporate live access to the internet, we wondered whether the internet-based automatic electronic translator, Google Translate, would be useful as a tool for translating common anaesthetic questions. Ten common anaesthetic pre-assessment questions relating to medical and anaesthetic history and assessment of the airway were translated from English into 10 languages, using Google Translate (http://www.googletranslate.com) (Table 1). Three members of the public native to each language, with a good grasp of English, excluding hospital staff, patients and their families, were asked to score each translation from 1 (complete rubbish) to 5 (perfectly clear/accurate). Certain questions scored higher overall e.g. ‘Do you have any known allergies?’ (scoring 138/150) and ‘Do you smoke?’ (scoring 122/150), whilst others translated poorly e.g. ‘Can you open your mouth and stick out your tongue?’ (scoring 87/150). Taking a total score of ≥ 12 (out of a maximum 15) for each question to indicate an intelligible translation, Spanish was the language with the most questions that were translated accurately, with Polish and Vietmanese the least (Table 1). In acute emergencies, the only interpretation aid available may be via the internet using a handheld device such as the iPhone. We found that Google Translate is a poor aid for certain languages whilst performing better for common Western languages (Spanish/German/French) and day-to-day common phrases. Some specific translated resources are available on the internet, e.g. for obstetric anaesthesia 3, and we suggest that a similar resource for general anaesthetic assessment/provision of information would be useful for non-English speaking patients requiring anaesthetic intervention.