Assessing the use of Google Translate for Spanish and Chinese translations of emergency department discharge instructions.

Khoong EC, Steinbrook E, Brown C, Fernandez A. JAMA Intern Med. 2019 Feb 25; [Epub ahead of print].

This study examined the accuracy of using Google Translate to translate 100 actual, deidentified discharge instructions from English to either Spanish or Chinese. The majority of instructions were correctly translated (92% correct in Spanish, 81% correct in Chinese), as assessed by back-translation performed by bilingual human translators. Less than 10% of erroneous translations had potential to cause harm.

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