Re: Try this ...

Date: 2020-09-02 03:47 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
>>But if someone has an uncommon condition that they need to learn all the jargon for, that's hard even in your native tongue. :/ <<

Fortunatly we mostly had bilingul staff for the really complex stuff, like contracts.

(I'll also say that I prefer to start teaching 1 really basic stuff 2 emergencies and 3 medical stuff /in that order/, because if something goes wrong those are the very first things you need.)

At the low end, you look up or copy stuff out of books especially for specific issues. (Hospital pages for going to hospital, maternity ward pages for having a baby, etc.)

I did end up going over more complicated terms for specific issues (stimming and adaptive equipment mostly) on two occasions, as I got along well with the people and was more passingly familiar with the issues than the average person off the street. (Educated layman standards, not medical professional.)

Another trick with basic conversant language proficiency is to basically level-grind thru less familliar stuff. I did that with a more advanced student to practice reading/talking and prep for a possible first-aid class.

Although I don't think we ever had to do this, another option would be to ask a medical professional to make the wordlist (possibly with definitions and slang/jargon abbreviations) then go over it and add definitions. For really complex or unusual stuff, maybe have a buddy take notes on what the doctor says at the appointment. (And get a note-taker who is passably tamilliar with medical complexity as a concept, if possible...)

Its also worth mentioning that I'm not usually dealing with emergencies - its mostly prep stuff. ("No, you did not win 1 mil, thats a scam.") And people immersed in my (foreign to them) language can start picking up enough really basic stuff/tricks to communicate in about a month.

By the way, Where Women Have No Doctor has the best pictogram representation of birth control I've ever seen. And seriously, check out the DK Billingual Picture Dictionaries.

>>Regrettably the best speechware is ruinously expensive in L-America.<<

If you download Google Translate, you can use it as a prosthetic voice assuming a) you can type and b) you are using it in one of the more common languages.* Just set it to English-English, for example. It will sound kind of monotone, but...
*English/Spanish/French count, Burmese doesn't.

I'm used to operating in a 'closest thing we've got' mentality for all but the fussiest issues. Once I had to come up with the cheapest possible first aid - I took the Red Cross reccomendations, than winnowed and substituted down to about $10-15. It used the already in-the-freezer frozen peas and a towel as an ice pack, for crying out loud!

And I keep making resources, because they're customizable, and homemade is basically free. (Its also kind of fun. :) )
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