Richard Smith was editor of the British Medical Journal for 13 years until 2004. He recently wrote about the fundamental importance of language translation and interpretation to global businesses and other enterprises.

If you’ve read the book Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World, by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche, you may already be familiar with the case of Willie Ramirez.

Ramirez was admitted to a hospital in Florida because his Spanish speaking family said he was “intoxicado,” meaning that he was suffering from some form of food poisoning. However the bilingual medical interpreter in the ER incorrectly translated the word into English as “intoxicated” and Ramirez was misdiagnosed as having taken a deliberate overdose.

Because of this mistake doctors failed to learn that Ramirez had actually suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and he received the wrong treatment, ended up quadriplegic, and eventually received a $71 million malpractice settlement.

Writing for the BMJ Group Blog, Richard Smith, a medical doctor himself, points out that a professional interpreter would have asked more questions to establish exactly what the family meant. He also blames the doctors who he says should not have jumped to a false conclusion on the basis of a single word, intoxicado, now known as the “$71 million word” among language interpreters.

According to Smith, language translation and interpretation are essential not only to health care, but to global diplomacy, law, war, tourism, and to businesses and other enterprises aspiring to be global because they recognize these services are fundamental to growing their business and their influence.

In this endeavor localization also plays a key role. “Three quarters of consumers say that they are more likely to buy products and services provided in their own language, and more than a half say that having information in their own language is more important than price in deciding whether they will buy,” writes Smith.

“Language is the most critical enabler of communication. Without translation, connecting the world simply isn’t possible,” says Ghassan Haddad, Director of Internationalization at Facebook. As a matter-of-fact, Haddad believes that translations have contributed the most to the growth of Facebook which is currently translated into 77 languages.

Now that’s quite an assessment of language translation from someone in a position to know at the social media giant.

By Alex DuPont
Marketing Communications Specialist
Language Translation Inc.