In emergency care settings, there is a crucial need for automated translation tools. We focus here on the BabelDr system, a speech-enabled fixed-phrase translator used to improve communication in emergency settings between doctors and allophone patients. The aim of the chapter is two-fold. First, we will assess if a bidirectional version of the phraselator allowing patients to answer doctors’ questions by selecting pictures from open-source databases will improve user satisfaction. Second, we wish to evaluate pictograph usability in this context. Our hypotheses are that images will in fact help to improve patient satisfaction and that multiple factors influence pictograph usability. Factors of interest include not only the comprehensibility of the pictographs per se, but also how the images are presented to the user with respect to their number and ordering. We showed that most respondents prefer to use the interface with pictographs and that multiple factors influence participants’ ability to find a pictograph based on a written form, but that the comprehensibility of the individual pictographs is probably the most important.

This book offers state-of-the-art research on the design and evaluation of assistive translation tools and systems to facilitate cross-cultural and cross-lingual communications in health and medical settings. This book illustrates using case studies important principles of designing assistive health communication tools which are (1) detectability of errors to boost user confidence by health professionals; (2) adaptability or customizability for health and medical domains; (3) inclusivity of translation modalities (written, speech, sign language) to serve people with disabilities; and (4) equality of accessibility standards for localised multilingual websites of health contents. To summarize these key principles for promotion of accessible and reliable translation technology, we use the acronym I-D-E-A.

Access to healthcare profoundly impacts the health and quality of life of Deaf people. Automatic translation tools are crucial in improving communication between Deaf patients and their healthcare providers. The aim of this chapter is to present the pipeline used to create the Swiss-French Sign Language (LSF-CH) version of BabelDr, a speech-enabled fixed phrase translator that was initially conceived to improve communication in emergency settings between doctors and allophone patients (Bouillon et al., 2021). In order to do so, we start off by explaining how we ported BabelDr in LSF-CH using both human and avatar videos. We first describe the creation of a reference corpus consisting of video translations done by human translators, then we present a second corpus of videos generated with a virtual human. Finally, we relate the findings of a questionnaire on Deaf users’ perspective on the use of signing avatars in the medical context. We showed that, although respondents prefer human videos, the use of automatic technologies associated with virtual characters is not without interest to the target audience and can be useful to them in the medical context.

The common thread that connects the first three papers is that, contrary to a wideheld view, metonymy and metaphor can be studied systematically. The contributors present and analyze various data sets that are taken to fall outside of the traditional areas of knowledge investigated in contemporary linguistic research. Our goal is to show that a subset of phenomena that have been labeled lexical idiosyncrasies (sense shift phenomena) and world/pragmatic knowledge effects (metonymy and metaphor) actually constitute a privileged window on the nature of lexical knowledge.

The papers by Julius Moravcsik and by Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides present detailed studies of metaphorical expressions. Their arguments are presented in such a way that it makes it clear how a particular data set may significantly affect the methodology for carrying out the study of the mental lexicon. In particular, while the lexicon can provide the key to understanding metaphor, in turn, this use of language represents actual evidence for determining the structuring of lexical information.

The paper by Jerry Hobbs extends, in an interesting and possibly controversial manner, the range of phenomena that are thought as metonymy: He makes us reconsider the relation between syntax and semantics. For example, as surprising as may be his treatment of extraposition as an instance of metonymy, we are forced to acknowledge the role of interpretive strategies when grammar alone fails to make sense of certain structures.