On the Use of Metaphor Translation in Psychiatry
Lois Wong
Providing mental healthcare to individuals with limited English proficiency
(LEP) remains a pressing problem within psychiatry. Because the majority of
individuals trained in providing psychiatric care are English speakers, the
quality of mental healthcare given to LEP patients is significantly lower than
that provided for English speakers. The provision of mental healthcare is
contingent on communication and understanding between the patient and
healthcare provider, much more so than in the realm of physical healthcare, and
English speakers are often unable to comprehend figurative language such as
metaphors used by LEPs. Hence, Figurative Language Translation is invaluable to
providing equitable psychiatric care. Now, metaphor has been shown to be
paramount in both identifying individuals struggling with mental problems and
helping those individuals understand and communicate their experiences.
Therefore, this paper aims to survey the potential of Machine Translation for
providing equitable psychiatric healthcare and highlights the need for further
research on the transferability of existing machine and metaphor translation
research in the domain of psychiatry.