EUROPE/SPAIN - Service of tele-translation for foreigners at hospitals in the Canary Islands

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - The Canary Islands health service plans to provide a new tele-translation service in the Island's 8 hospitals and 31 clinics to communicate with patients in 49 languages. This new service offered by medical centres in the Islands most frequented by foreigners, will translate in real time into Spanish 20 languages including Swahili, Punjabi, Chinese and Arabic as well as English, French, German and Italian and other languages such as Japanese, Dutch and Latvian in four hours.
This translating service will function 12 hours a day, seven days a week with a mobile phone with a double ear phone to establish rapid communication between the doctor, patient and translator. (AP) (4/12/2007 Agenzia Fides; Righe:16; Parole:154)