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Gained in Translation
Michael D. Anderson, MD
Arch Fam Med. 1992;1(1):13.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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I DID MY internship at a large county hospital, and many of our patients were Hmong displaced from their native Laos during the Vietnam war. None spoke English, and most came from the preindustrial Laotian highlands. So totally different was their world from ours that they dug outdoor privies in down-town St Paul, Minn, thinking that toilet bowls were for washing rice. Many could not understand the concept of a telephone, and a few refused to do so much as touch the device, believing that if it captured the voice, it must also capture the soul.
The county hired interpreters who were Vietnamese. At the time, I thought they spoke Hmong. Much later I learned that the Hmong spoke a version of Vietnamese, but only when speaking to our interpreters. Through conquest and commerce the Vietnamese had influenced other Southeast Asian cultures for centuries and the Hmong had acquired
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
Red Wing, Minn
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