AI Translation for Health Communication

Knowledge mobilization resources for parents provide information to help make health decisions for their children. These resources can include videos, infographics, and plain language summaries. They are often created in English. This can make them hard to understand for people whose first language is not English. Translating these resources into other languages may be helpful. However, professional translation can take time and be expensive.

The study will compare a resource that is in English with the same resource translated into another language. The investigators will use both high and low resource languages commonly spoken in Alberta: Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, Urdu. Parents who speak these languages will be asked to answer questions about how easy it is to understand and use the information. The investigators will also see if artificial intelligence can be used to translate the resource. To do this, parents will be asked to look at a resource that was translated by a professional and the same resource that was translated using artificial intelligence. Then, parents will answer questions about how clear the translations are. Parents will be asked to participate in the study using the internet. They will answer questions using an online questionnaire. Parents will also be asked if they are interested in taking part in an online interview. This will help us understand their thoughts about the resources in more detail. The plan is to involve 576 parents with 144 parents per language group.

This project will help to better understand whether parents prefer a resource in their own language compared to an English version. It will also help to understand whether artificial intelligence can be used to translate resources so that they are easier for parents to access. This work is very important so that all parents and their children have access to high quality health information. This can help all families make the best decisions for their children's health.