Abstract

This paper describes a small-scale survey conducted among non-native speakers of English living in Ireland. We collected data from 86 respondents by means of an online questionnaire. Our goal was to investigate their health information seeking behaviour; potential comprehension issues with health content; and their adoption of machine translation (MT) systems. We found that: the Internet is widely used for health-related searches; Wikipedia is the most consulted website; and information on illnesses and public health threats is frequently sought. We observed that the language in which online searches are conducted is influenced by respondents’ self-reported level of English proficiency, with most limited English proficiency (LEP) Internet users looking for health information in their native languages to facilitate comprehension. We also observed that specialised medical vocabulary might hinder comprehension. Finally, most participants reported adopting MT to translate online health content from English into their native languages, and LEP respondents reported using MT more frequently than proficient respondents. This survey highlights the need to increase the accessibility of online health content for nonnative speakers of English (especially LEP users) with a view to reducing their vulnerability. We argue that text simplification might lead to the production of more comprehensible and more machine translatable health-related texts.