2025-08-29
Blog
Learn how medical phrase libraries give healthcare workers instant access to safe, verified translations in 40+ languages – improving communication and patient safety.
Language barriers can delay treatment, reduce patient safety, and increase stress for healthcare workers. A medical phrase library is one way to solve this challenge.
A medical phrase library is a curated collection of pre-translated, medically verified terms and phrases designed to support communication in healthcare settings. It gives healthcare professionals who interact with patients who speak different languages quick access to essential medical expression.
Some common use cases include:
This makes it a valuable tool for breaking down language barriers in health care and improving multilingual communication between doctors, nurses, and patients.
Unlike free-form machine translation, a medical phrase library ensures consistency. Healthcare professionals can quickly search through the library to find the right pre-translated phrase and instantly render it in the supported language.
Most phrase libraries are available as mobile apps or web platforms, where phrases can be accessed as:
By standardizing and streamlining communication, medical phrase libraries help reduce misunderstandings, improve patient safety, and make it easier to share critical medical information across languages.
In the Care to Translate app, the phrase library includes over 3,500 medically verified phrases in 48 languages, tailored to a wide range of healthcare settings. Each phrase is carefully curated and reviewed by both medical and linguistic experts, ensuring communication that is not only fast but also safe, precise, and reliable.
Download the app for free and explore the Care to Translate phrase library today.
Both medical phrase libraries and interpreters support communication in healthcare settings, but they serve different purposes. Here are three key differences:
A phrase library can only translate the preloaded content it contains. If you need open-ended, free-form communication, a human interpreter – or a real-time translation tool – is better suited.
All content in the Care to Translate medical phrase library is human-verified by experts in medicine and linguistics. While professional medical interpreters also have expertise, they can be hard to access. In many cases, healthcare providers may have to rely on untrained relatives or generic machine translation tools, which are not reliable for complex medical terminology.
Interpreters are invaluable but not always available at short notice. Emergencies, unexpected admissions, or patients needing translation support can arise at any time. And waiting for a phone interpreter or arranging in-person support isn’t always possible. A phrase library, on the other hand, provides instant access to verified translations when every second counts.
Many healthcare professionals combine both tools: phrase libraries for speed and accessibility, and interpreters for depth, nuance, and complex interactions. This hybrid approach ensures efficiency without compromising patient safety or understanding.
Learn more about what to think about then communicating through an interpreter.
Sometimes, you may need to communicate with a patient, but the phrase you’re looking for isn’t available in the medical phrase library. In the Care to Translate app, there are two options to handle these situations:
You can use the Live Translate feature, which supports over 130 languages. It fills in gaps by translating your words in real-time using speech recognition, allowing you to communicate even when a specific phrase isn’t included in the phrase library.
If the language you need isn’t verifiably available, you can use Live Translate to machine-translate the existing phrase library content. Since the phrases are carefully formulated with medical terminology, localization, and sensitive topics in mind, they are designed to translate effectively to new languages – even via machine translation.
Safety note: Both options rely on machine translation and are not human-verified for medical accuracy. To reduce risk, use tools like the reverse translation feature in Live Translate to check the phrase against the original language before using it with a patient. While these features help bridge gaps, verified translations should always be used whenever possible to ensure patient safety.
Watch our recorded webinar with Lynne Bowker, Professor specializing in machine translation literacy, to discover the best practices and use cases for machine translation.
The Care to Translate medical phrase library currently supports 48 languages, with new ones added regularly. Its real-time feature, Live Translate, extends support to more than 130 languages, making it a powerful tool for multilingual communication in health care.
But what about dialects? Dialects can significantly affect how translations are understood. To ensure clarity and inclusivity, Care to Translate avoids regional expressions that can limit understanding for the majority of users. Instead, when regional variations are substantial, the app offers separate language options, for example:
This approach improves accuracy in both audio playback and transcription, giving healthcare professionals the flexibility to choose the most appropriate variant for their patients.
Coming soon: The team is also working on adding dialect-specific options for Arabic, which will further enhance precision in the communication. Subscribe to our newsletter to get notified when dialects are available.
While the most frequently used languages and phrases can vary depending on the country or healthcare setting, clear patterns do emerge. Some questions and languages are consistently used more than others.
These insights reflect common challenges healthcare professionals face in day-to-day patient interactions.
What language do you think you would use most often? Explore all available languages here.