Talk To Me translation app

Purpose #

A mobile healthcare translation app used by ward staff to convey low-risk everyday care messages to older CALD patients with limited English proficiency in the absence of a professional interpreter.

"Talk To Me was developed by St Vincent's Health Melbourne in 2016." (Hwang, 2022, p. 580)

Mechanism #

A fixed-phrase (phrasebook / "phrasalator") app: a set of carefully chosen, pre-translated healthcare phrases played audibly or shown as translated text/pictures in the target language. It contains only low-risk phrases, does no free-text translation, and translates in a single direction, so it cannot translate a patient's reply.

"other language translation tools prefer "fixed-­phrase translation" or "phrasalators" in order to avoid some of the pitfalls related to free translation without context (Panayiotou et al., 2020), and example of these include CALD Assist, Talk To Me and xPrompt." (Hwang, 2022, p. 579)

Example(s) of usage #

Trialed on aged-care hospital wards; accounted for 5 of the 21 analyzed observations. Example of a reassurance effect: "Patient had some level of spoken English, the app provided reassurance as she is usually anxious and vague." (Observer, site 1, Talk To Me).

Other Notes #

Selected, alongside CALD Assist, based on an earlier scoping study of app suitability for low-risk conversations (Panayiotou et al., 2019).