ArticleQualitative health research2023
Interpreters as Translation Machines: Telephone Interpreting Challenges as Awareness Problems.
Article in Qualitative health research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Communication Barriers in Patient-Provider Interactions in Health Care: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- 'Real time, real change': the role of artificial intelligence in providing real-time language translation services in regional medicine.Internal medicine journal · 2026Review
- Methodological Reflections from Engaging Five Culturally and Linguistically Unique U.S. Muslim Populations.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Language Concordance and Interpreter Use in Primary Care: Perspectives from Spanish-preferring Patients.Journal of immigrant and minority health · 2026Article
- Structural racism and sexual and reproductive healthcare experiences: A qualitative study among undocumented Asian and Latina.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Telehealth has been widely adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this article examines challenges faced by telephone interpreters in working with healthcare providers in the context of the Australian healthcare system. Based on one-on-one interviews with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, it explores various elements which affect communication processes in telephone interpreting and interpreters' views on healthcare providers' abilities to collaborate with interpreters. Data analysis indicates that telephone interpreting is often affected by a lack of briefing, poor acoustics and the absence of visual cues. While these factors pose significant challenges to telephone interpreters, a provider's tendency to see interpreters as 'translation machines' was perceived as a deeper underlying problem by the interpreters. The mechanistic approaches to interpreting among healthcare providers pose barriers to interpreter-provider collaboration and exacerbate communication problems caused by the external elements in telephone-interpreted encounters. The article calls for urgent need to raise awareness of interpreting among healthcare providers as a key to ensuring desirable health outcomes for patients from minority backgrounds.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.