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Lost In Translation
Tackling The Barriers To Hispanic Good Health
Excerpted From PharmaVOICE - March, 2004
“A Spanish speaker from Mexico may use words to describe parts of the body or for how to take medicine that are very different from the words that a person from Chile would use,” says Elizabeth Elting, president and CEO of TransPerfect Translations.
Ms. Elting notes that only 28% of Hispanics born outside the United States are English dominant or bilingual, compared with 96% of those born in the United States.
According to a TransPerfect survey, 33% of non-English speakers, across all groups, have left the doctor’s office without being fully clear about their medication. Among Spanish speakers: 57% said they found the information accompanying prescription drugs to be impossible to fully understand because of language difficulties; 47% have described a bad prescription experience they have encountered because of a language barrier problem; 44% said they have at one time taken the wrong dosage because they had trouble translating the instructions into Spanish; 29% know of elderly relatives who have taken their medication improperly because they didn’t understand the instructions; 12% said they drank alcohol while on their medication because they didn’t fully understand the instructions; and 8% said they had taken medication and driven a car when they did not understand the information accompanying the medication that cautioned against operating heavy machinery.
—Kim Ribbink
About TransPerfect
TransPerfect is a diversified family of companies providing a full array of international communication services in 22 offices worldwide, including document management, translation, and staffing solutions. TransPerfect is ISO 9001:2000 certified which means it has implemented the most rigorous quality assurance process, according to criteria set forth by the International Organization for Standardization. The wide range of services it provides includes imaging, reprographic services, electronic data discovery, multilingual OCR, electronic labeling, coding, on-site imaging and copying, as well as staffing, and a full suite of translation and interpretation solutions. Headquarters are in New York City. |
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