# Lowering the burden of medical translation by enabling international healthcare professionals as human editors of machine translations

> **NIH NIH R44** · TRANSCENDENT INTERNATIONAL, LLC · 2022 · $265,832

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Language access solutions in healthcare have focused almost exclusively on the provision of verbal medical
interpretation, despite federal and state laws that mandate translation of written information for patients with
limited English proficiency (LEP). In recent years, machine translation (MT) has made significant strides, but
when it comes to mission-critical technical materials such as healthcare information, the accuracy rate of
machine-only translations plummets. Thus, experts recommend MT as a starting point for translating
health-related material then supplementing with human quality assurance editing. However, coordinating
machine translation with bilingual human editors who have technical medical knowledge is a challenge,
especially for less commonly supported languages. Translation vendors currently pass on the associated costs
of human assistance to healthcare institutions. The Canopy Translate project will address these deficits by
implementing a novel, human-assisted machine translation (HAMT) process. The envisioned workflow
management platform will leverage MT engines to expedite the initial rendering of source documents into a
target language, then invite bilingual healthcare professionals around the world to apply human editing to the
machine-generated translation. The bilingual contributors, who will gain complimentary access to our Medical
English eLearning courses as an incentive for their participation, will complete the editing task through gamified
learning exercises. For example, a nurse in the Philippines has native fluency in Tagalog and advanced
general English but desires to improve his medical English. He can edit a machine-generated Tagalog
translation one sentence at a time in the form of a gamified activity. Other contributors will edit the same text for
additional quality assurance to form the final, polished version in Tagalog. The system will then organize the
final translated content into a reusable document library. In Phase I, we will test the feasibility of this hybrid
HAMT approach for medical content. Upon meeting feasibility benchmarks, we will advance to Phase II, during
which we will create a minimum viable product, encompassing several novel natural language processing
(NLP) algorithms, and evaluate the translation output according to a set of quality benchmarks. If successful,
this project will significantly improve the availability, speed, and cost-effectiveness of producing multilingual
health content, with potential to reduce health disparities in LEP populations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10603983
- **Project number:** 1R44MD018266-01
- **Recipient organization:** TRANSCENDENT INTERNATIONAL, LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Katherine Riestenberg
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $265,832
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-26 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10603983

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10603983, Lowering the burden of medical translation by enabling international healthcare professionals as human editors of machine translations (1R44MD018266-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10603983. Licensed CC0.

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