Providing a free flow of accurate information and a clear understanding about how to improve human health and prevent disease depends upon spoken, written, or signed words. We also offer a checklist to guide providers when they do not share a common language with their patients. In this manuscript, we offer linguistics, gesture, health literacy, health communication, and cross-cultural experience as lenses through which to consider cross-discipline communication. Using these two additional representations could provide a better understanding of all factors at play.ĭuring our careers in linguistics, communication, and interpretation, and from our work in health literacy, it has become clear to the authors that many health professionals lack a clear resource to help them navigate the multilingual reality of health care in the United States. The authors of this manuscript contend that this same 360-degree model of the clinician could be matched with a 360-model of an interpreter or translator and a 360-degree model of the patient’s stressors. This constitutes an important effort to create a more holistic view of the provider. Recently, NAM Perspectives published “A Journey to Construct an All-Encompassing Conceptual Model of Factors Affecting Clinician Well-Being and Resilience”. Simply providing definitions for the topics discussed does not provide an effective message for understanding the human context of language-especially in medical settings. This manuscript describes complex problems of language, interpretation, gesture, and translation and recommends solutions. Interpretation, translation, and regard for language need to be incorporated across the clinical workflow and deeply considered and planned for well in advance of the patient seeking care. However, these areas often aren’t considered before the patient is sitting in front of the clinician-and at that point, it is too late. Language, interpretation, and translation are becoming increasingly critical parts of practicing medicine across the United States. “Translation is not a matter of words only it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.” That collaboration is very enriching and very rewarding-a good way of ensuring you produce a decent translation.” And, you need the humbleness to understand your original, to be part of it-then also the practical humbleness to get someone who knows more than you to check your work. Once you are a servant, you may be lucky to be called a master of your craft. “The first skill of a great translator is humbleness, to be a servant.