Language Quality in Maternity
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Language Quality in Maternity: How to ensure effective communication in maternity settings where healthcare providers and users do not share the same language
IRAS ID
274397
Contact name
Li Li
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East Anglia
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Our societies are increasingly multilingual. Public sector organisations face a growing need to deliver services and engage with users across languages, in the context of dwindling budgets and untried new technologies. The related challenges are profound, including practical, financial, commercial and ethical. Yet front line workers, such as doctors and midwives, police investigators, social workers and health advocates, typically have little training or expertise in cross-language communication are under pressure to cut costs on ‘non-core’ services and may see emerging technologies such as Google Translate or remote video interpreting as an attractive apparent solution.
This collaborative Doctoral Project will produce an important new understanding of how emerging technologies are affecting the delivery of services across languages, particularly in relation to translation and interpreting quality. Although the 'Language Quality in Maternity' project will use UK maternity settings with advocacy as its case study, the findings are of much broader interest, as these challenges are increasing across the board.
This research project aims to understand how new technologies are affecting interpreting quality and therefore, is interested in finding answers to the following questions: 1) What are the main challenges in providing maternity care across languages in the UK?; 2) How are remote video interpreting technologies, and other associated translation technologies, currently being harnessed by users and providers?; 3) On what grounds is the decision to use technologies taken, and who decides or monitors the impact of their introduction?; 4) What is the impact on interpreting quality when remote video interpreting is used in a range of maternity interactions?; 5) How can we effectively assess interpreting quality where new technologies are used?; and 6) What constitutes good, and bad, practice in the introduction of remote video interpreting – i.e. which interactions do they enhance or support; and which interactions ought never to be used if any?
REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
20/WA/0129
Date of REC Opinion
26 May 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion