Cover not available

Article published In: Digital Translation
Vol. 12:2 (2025) ► pp.125–149

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

How machine translation is used in healthcare

Insights from recent Chinese migrants in the Netherlands

ORCiD logo with link | Leiden University
ORCiD logo with link | Leiden University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Leiden University.

Published online: 2 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dt.25015.yan
Abstract
The growing popularity of machine translation (MT), driven by its accessibility and cost- effectiveness, has made it a valuable resource for migrants navigating language barriers in healthcare. Despite its increasing use, there is a limited body of research exploring migrants’ use and perceptions of MT in healthcare. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating how Chinese migrants in the Netherlands employ MT to meet their healthcare communication needs, with a particular focus on satisfaction and trust. This study uses a questionnaire-based approach to collect data from 108 respondents. The findings reveal three key insights: (1) Chinese migrants in the Netherlands face various challenges in the healthcare system, such as language barriers and cultural differences; (2) MT and generative AI (GenAI) tools are widely adopted to overcome language obstacles; and (3) most participants report moderate levels of satisfaction and trust in MT for healthcare communication. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of Chinese migrants’ healthcare experiences in the Netherlands and their use of MT to enhance healthcare communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Study context
  • 2.Language barriers in healthcare contexts
    • 2.1Machine translation in addressing language barriers in healthcare
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Questionnaire design
    • 3.2Data analysis
    • 3.3Respondents
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Chinese migrants’ healthcare experiences in the Netherlands
    • 4.2Use of MT in healthcare
  • 5.Summary and discussion
    • 5.1Policy and design implications
  • 6.Conclusions
    • 6.1Limitations and research directions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (61)
References
Aelbrecht, Karolien, Lise Hanssens, Jens Detollenaere, Sara Willems, Myriam Deveugele, and Peter Pype. 2019. “Determinants of Physician–Patient Communication: The Role of Language, Education and Ethnicity.” Patient Education and Counseling 102 (4): 776–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beagley, Jonathan, Jim Hlavac, and Emiliano Zucchi. 2020. “Patient Length of Stay, Patient Readmission Rates and the Provision of Professional Interpreting Services in Healthcare in Australia.” Health and Social Care in the Community 28 (5): 1643–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berbyuk Lindström, Nataliya, and Rocío Rodríguez Pozo. 2020. “Perspectives of Nurses and Doulas on the Use of Information and Communication Technology in Intercultural Pediatric Care: Qualitative Pilot Study.” JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting 3 (1): e16545. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bouillon, Pierrette, Johanna Gerlach, Hervé Spechbach, Nikos Tsourakis, and Sonia Halimi. 2017. “BabelDr vs Google Translate: A User Study at Geneva University Hospitals (HUG).” In 20th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT). Prague, Czech Republic. [URL]
Bowker, Lynne. 2020. “Chinese speakers’ use of machine translation as an aid for scholarly writing in English: a review of the literature and a report on a pilot workshop on machine translation literacy.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 7 (3): 288–298, Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowker, Lynne, and Jairo Buitrago Ciro. 2019. Machine Translation and Global Research. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brzoska, Patrick, Ute Ellert, Ahmet Kimil, Oliver Razum, Anke-Christine Sass, Ramazan Salman, and Hajo Zeeb. 2015. “Reviewing the Topic of Migration and Health as a New National Health Target for Germany.” International Journal of Public Health 60 (1): 13–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, J. L., J. Ramsay, and J. Green. 2001. “Age, Gender, Socioeconomic, and Ethnic Differences in Patients’ Assessments of Primary Health Care.” Quality in Health Care 10 (2): 90–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Canfora, Carmen, and Angelika Ottmann. 2020. “Risks in Neural Machine Translation.” Translation Spaces 9 (1): 58–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek. 2025. “StatLine.” Webpagina. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek. May 12, 2025. [URL]
Cox, Antoon, and Katrijn Maryns. 2021. “Multilingual Consultations in Urgent Medical Care.” The Translator 27 (1): 75–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Credé, Sarah H., Elizabeth Such, and Suzanne Mason. 2018. “International Migrants’ Use of Emergency Departments in Europe Compared with Non-Migrants’ Use: A Systematic Review.” European Journal of Public Health 28 (1): 61–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Czapka, Elżbieta Anna, Jennifer Gerwing, and Mette Sagbakken. 2019. “Invisible Rights: Barriers and Facilitators to Access and Use of Interpreter Services in Health Care Settings by Polish Migrants in Norway.” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 47 (7): 755–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dew, Kristin N., Anne M. Turner, Yong K. Choi, Alyssa Bosold, and Katrin Kirchhoff. 2018. “Development of Machine Translation Technology for Assisting Health Communication: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Biomedical Informatics 85 (September): 56–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Falla, Abby M., Irene K. Veldhuijzen, Amena A. Ahmad, Miriam Levi, and Jan Hendrik Richardus. 2017. “Language Support for Linguistic Minority Chronic Hepatitis B/C Patients: An Exploratory Study of Availability and Clinicians’ Perceptions of Language Barriers in Six European Countries.” BMC Health Services Research 17 (1): 150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Federici, Federico M., Christophe Declercq, Jorge Díaz Cintas, and Rocío Baños Piñero. 2023. “Ethics, Automated Processes, Machine Translation, and Crises.” In Towards Responsible Machine Translation, edited by Helena Moniz and Carla Parra Escartín, 41:135–56. Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gijsberts, Mérove, Willem Huijnk, and Ria Vogels. 2011. Chinese Nederlanders. Van Horeca Naar Hogeschool.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guerberof-Arenas, Ana, and Joss Moorkens. 2023. “Ethics and Machine Translation: The End User Perspective.” In Towards Responsible Machine Translation, edited by Helena Moniz and Carla Parra Escartín, 41:113–33. Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haddow, Barry, Alexandra Birch, and Kenneth Heafield. 2021. “Machine Translation in Healthcare.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health, 1st ed., edited by Şebnem Susam-Saraeva and Eva Spišiaková, 108–29. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hwang, Kerry, Sue Williams, Emiliano Zucchi, et al. 2022. “Testing the Use of Translation Apps to Overcome Everyday Healthcare Communication in Australian Aged-Care Hospital Wards — An Exploratory Study.” Nursing Open 9 (1): 578–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2024. “Interactive World Migration Report 2024.” [URL]
Jaeger, Fabienne N., Nicole Pellaud, Bénédicte Laville, and Pierre Klauser. 2019. “The Migration-Related Language Barrier and Professional Interpreter Use in Primary Health Care in Switzerland.” BMC Health Services Research 19 (1): 429. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kalich, Angela, Lyn Heinemann, and Setareh Ghahari. 2016. “A Scoping Review of Immigrant Experience of Health Care Access Barriers in Canada.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 18 (3): 697–709. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karliner, Leah S., Andrew Auerbach, Anna Nápoles, Dean Schillinger, Dana Nickleach, and Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable. 2012. “Language Barriers and Understanding of Hospital Discharge Instructions.” Medical Care 50 (4): 283–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kreienbrinck, Annika, Saskia Hanft-Robert, and Mike Mösko. 2024. “Usability of Technological Tools to Overcome Language Barriers in Health Care: A Scoping Review Protocol.” BMJ Open 14 (3): e079814. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lebrun, Lydie A. 2012. “Effects of Length of Stay and Language Proficiency on Health Care Experiences among Immigrants in Canada and the United States.” Social Science & Medicine 74 (7): 1062–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Won, Elaine C. Khoong, Billy Zeng, Francine Rios-Fetchko, YingYing Ma, Kirsten Liu, and Alicia Fernandez. 2023. “Evaluation of Commercially Available Machine Interpretation Applications for Simple Clinical Communication.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 38 (10): 2333–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, Cha-Hsuan, David Ingleby, and Ludwien Meeuwesen. 2011. “Barriers to Health Care for Chinese in the Netherlands.” International Journal of Family Medicine 2011 (1): 635853. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, Cha-Hsuan, Ludwien Meeuwesen, Floryt van Wesel, and David Ingleby. 2015. “Why Do Ethnic Chinese in the Netherlands Underutilize Mental Health Care Services? Evidence from a Qualitative Study.” Transcultural Psychiatry 52 (3): 331–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matlin, Stephen A., Anneliese Depoux, Stefanie Schütte, Antoine Flahault, and Luciano Saso. 2018. “Migrants’ and Refugees’ Health: Towards an Agenda of Solutions.” Public Health Reviews 39 (1): 27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mbanya, Vivian N., Laura Terragni, Abdi A. Gele, Esperanza Diaz, and Bernadette N. Kumar. 2019. “Access to Norwegian Healthcare System — Challenges for Sub-Saharan African Immigrants.” International Journal for Equity in Health 18 (1): 125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCalman, Janya, Crystal Jongen, and Roxanne Bainbridge. 2017. “Organisational Systems’ Approaches to Improving Cultural Competence in Healthcare: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature.” International Journal for Equity in Health 16 (1): 78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mona, Hatem, Lena M. C. Andersson, Anders Hjern, and Henry Ascher. 2021. “Barriers to Accessing Health Care among Undocumented Migrants in Sweden — a Principal Component Analysis.” BMC Health Services Research 21 (1): 830. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moorkens, Joss. 2022. “Ethics and Machine Translation.” In Machine Translation for Everyone: Empowering Users in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Dorothy Kenny, 121–40. Berlin: Language Science Press. [URL]
Nurminen, Mary. 2021. Investigating the Influence of Context in the Use and Reception of Raw Machine Translation. PhD thesis, Tampere University, Finland.
Nurminen, Mary, and Maarit Koponen. 2020. “Machine Translation and Fair Access to Information.” Translation Spaces 9 (1): 150–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pandey, Mamata, R. Geoffrey Maina, Jonathan Amoyaw, Yiyan Li, Rejina Kamrul, C. Rocha Michaels, and Razawa Maroof. 2021. “Impacts of English Language Proficiency on Healthcare Access, Use, and Outcomes among Immigrants: A Qualitative Study.” BMC Health Services Research 21 (1): 741. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pawlikowska, Teresa, Wenjuan Zhang, Frances Griffiths, Jan van Dalen, and Cees van der Vleuten. 2012. “Verbal and Non-Verbal Behavior of Doctors and Patients in Primary Care Consultations — How This Relates to Patient Enablement.” Patient Education and Counseling 86 (1): 70–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pieke, Frank N., and Gregor Benton. 1998. “The Chinese in the Netherlands.” In The Chinese in Europe, edited by Gregor Benton and Frank N. Pieke, 125–67. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rechel, Bernd, Philipa Mladovsky, David Ingleby, Johan P. Mackenbach, and Martin McKee. 2013. “Migration and Health in an Increasingly Diverse Europe.” The Lancet 381 (9873): 1235–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossetti, Alessandra, Sharon O’Brien, and Patrick Cadwell. 2020. “Comprehension and Trust in Crises: Investigating the Impact of Machine Translation and Post-Editing.” Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, no. 2, 9–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez Ramos, María delMar, Lorena Pérez Macías, and Celia Rico. 2020. “Study on the Usefulness of Machine Translation in the Migratory Context: Analysis of Translators’ Perceptions.” Open Linguistics, 61: 68–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Samkange-Zeeb, Florence, Silja Samerski, Lucy Doos, Rachel Humphris, Beatriz Padilla, and Hannah Bradby. 2020. “‘It’s the First Barrier’ — Lack of Common Language a Major Obstacle When Accessing/Providing Healthcare Services Across Europe.” Frontiers in Sociology 5 (November):557563. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Savoldi, Beatrice, Alan Ramponi, Matteo Negri, and Luisa Bentivogli. 2025. “Translation in the Hands of Many: Centering Lay Users in Machine Translation Interactions.” arXiv. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Savoldi, Beatrice, Bastings, Jasmijn, Bentivogli, Luisa and Eva Vanmassenhove. 2025. “A Decade of Gender Bias in Machine Translation.” Patterns 6 (6): 101257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schinkel, Sanne, Barbara C. Schouten, Fatmagül Kerpiclik, Bas Van Den Putte, and Julia C. M. Van Weert. 2019. “Perceptions of Barriers to Patient Participation: Are They Due to Language, Culture, or Discrimination?” Health Communication 34 (12): 1469–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schouten, Barbara C., Antoon Cox, Gözde Duran, Koen Kerremans, Leyla Köseoğlu Banning, Ali Lahdidioui, Maria van den Muijsenbergh, et al. 2020. “Mitigating Language and Cultural Barriers in Healthcare Communication: Toward a Holistic Approach.” Patient Education and Counseling 1031:2604–8. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schouten, Barbara C., Linn Manthey, and Claudio Scarvaglieri. 2023. “Teaching Intercultural Communication Skills in Healthcare to Improve Care for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Patients.” Patient Education and Counseling 115 (October): 107890. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Straiton, Melanie L., and Sonja Myhre. 2017. “Learning to Navigate the Healthcare System in a New Country: A Qualitative Study.” Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care 35 (4): 352–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sungur, Hande, Maria E. T. C. Van Den Muijsenbergh, Julia C. M. Van Weert, and Barbara C. Schouten. 2022. “Caring for Older Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Patients with Cancer: Healthcare Providers’ Perceived Barriers to Communication.” Journal of Geriatric Oncology 13 (6): 862–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sybesma, Rint. 2017. “Chinese in the Netherlands.” In Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, Vol. 11, edited by Rint Sybesma, Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev Handel, C.-T. James Huang, and James Myers: 456–62. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taira, Breena R., Vanessa Kreger, Aristides Orue, and Lisa C. Diamond. 2021. “A Pragmatic Assessment of Google Translate for Emergency Department Instructions.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 36 (11): 3361–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tian, Yang. 2025. “How Machine Translation is Used in Healthcare: Insights from Recent Chinese Migrants in the Netherlands [Data set]”. Zenodo. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trujillos-Yébenes, Lorena, and Ana Muñoz-Miquel. 2022. “Machine Translation and Post-editing in the Medical Field.” Revista Tradumàtica 201:, 057–076. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turner, Anne M., Margo Bergman, Megumu Brownstein, Kate Cole, and Katrin Kirchhoff. 2014. “A Comparison of Human and Machine Translation of Health Promotion Materials for Public Health Practice: Time, Costs, and Quality.” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 20 (5): 523–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Valdez, Susana, Ana Guerberof-Arenas, and Karls Ligtenberg. 2023. “Migrant Communities Living in the Netherlands and Their Use of MT in Health Contexts.” In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT), edited by Mary Nurminen et al., 325–34. EAMT: Tampere, Finland. [URL]
Vieira, Lucas Nunes, Minako O’Hagan, and Carol O’Sullivan. 2021. “Understanding the Societal Impacts of Machine Translation.” Information, Communication & Society 24 (11): 1515–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zappatore, Marco, and Gilda Ruggieri. 2024. “Adopting Machine Translation in the Healthcare Sector: A Methodological Multi-Criteria Review.” Computer Speech & Language 84 (March):101582. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zendedel, Rena, Barbara C. Schouten, Julia C. M. Van Weert, and Bas Van Den Putte. 2016. “Informal Interpreting in General Practice: Comparing the Perspectives of General Practitioners, Migrant Patients and Family Interpreters.” Patient Education and Counseling 99 (6): 981–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue