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2 results

  • 6 - The Case of Social Services

  • Lucas N. Vieira, University of Bristol
  • Book:
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    Published online:
    15 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026, pp 108-129
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  • Summary

    Chapter 6 is a case study of multilingual communication in social work. It draws on in-depth interviews carried out with eighteen UK social workers. The interviews included vivid accounts of challenging scenarios. In one of them, a child protection team manager had to sit with a family for two hours while trying to contact a Vietnamese interpreter. A different social worker had concerns that human interpreters could fail to convey explicit but crucial details relating to rape and sexual abuse. Machine translation was used in all such cases. Its balance of risks and benefits was sometimes clear. More often, it was highly complex. Two problems raised by the social workers are foregrounded in the chapter. The first is the issue of languages for which both human and technological resources are less abundant. The second concerns additional needs that involve more than a barrier between verbal languages. The chapter draws attention to the practical challenges of navigating cultural and linguistic differences in the provision of social services. It echoes the social workers’ requests for more guidance and support.

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  • Multilingual Access to Critical Services in the Age of AI
  • Lucas N. Vieira
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
  • Automated translations can break down language barriers and increase access to information, but they can also be highly inaccurate. This timely book explores the social challenges and ethical considerations of using artificial intelligence (AI) translations in high-stakes professional environments. Based on contributions from over two thousand professionals from critical sectors including healthcare, social work, emergency services and the police, the analysis explores the motivations and consequences of multilingual uses of AI across these sectors. Real-life examples provided throughout the book bring home the delicate balance of risks and benefits of using AI to serve and communicate with multilingual communities. By drawing on concepts such as virtue, trust, empathy and AI literacy, this book makes a case for nuance and flexibility, defends the value of language access, and calls for greater transparency in the development and deployment of AI translation tools. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.