An Evaluation of Google Translate in Pharmacy Domain Between Thai and Myanmar

Google Translate is a worldwide languages translation tool. We expected this tool can be used in communication among Thai pharmacists and Myanmar patients in drugstores. However, limitations of using in health and medical domains have been found. The aims of this study were to evaluate Google Translate for translating pharmaceutical texts between Thai and Myanmar with two levels of language structure, i.e., word and sentence and to test performance of translation with two methods, i.e., direct (directly translating from languages A to B) and indirect method (through English as intermediate). In the level of word, translating from Thai to Myanmar with the direct method was not significantly different when compared with the indirect method. The averages of acceptance rates were 38.84% and 40.26%, respectively. On the other hand, directly translating from Myanmar to Thai was more significantly accurate than the indirect method (p-value = 0.009). The averages of acceptance rate were 58.33% and 56.55%, respectively. The results of translating in the sentence level presented both semantic and syntactic errors. Adequacy scores of 1.91 and 1.94 as well as fluency scores of 1.89 and 1.92 (from the maximum score of 5) were obtained from the direct method Thai to Myanmar translation and the indirect method, respectively. Adequacy scores in directly translating from Myanmar to Thai and indirectly were 1.91 and 1.93 while fluency scores were 1.84 and 1.86, respectively. From the results, accuracy of Google Translate was limited to use in pharmacy domain. Therefore, it should be improved before applying in real situation because interpretations have an effect on quality of health care service to patients.