Lost in translation:

The challenge of Hmong mental health counseling

“Just interpret word for word.”

Hmong interpreters working with mental health counselors dread that command because it just won’t work—too many English expressions in the field of counseling do not translate “word for word” into Hmong or vice versa.

The best-known example is the attempt to translate the Hmong term for “mental health.” In Hmong it is “nyuaj siab nyuaj ntsws.” Unfortunately, translated word for word into English, it becomes “dirty or difficult liver, dirty or difficult lungs.”

Michael Goh consults with members of the Multicultural Center
for Integrated Health. (left to right: Ai Vang, executive director;
Goh; Kathryn McGraw Schuchman, clinical director; and Anne
Bellamy, social worker)

“The problem arises because the Hmong language often reflects a holistic view of health—both physical and mental,” says Michael Goh, assistant professor of counseling and student personnel psychology (CSPP) in the college’s Department of Educational Psychology. He and CSPP graduate student Pahoua Yang, a clinical social worker from Wisconsin, are working with the Minnesota Hmong Mental Health Providers Network to provide better tools and training for both mental health counselors and Hmong interpreters.

Goh has been working on a terminology task force, now part of the Hmong Mental Health Research Group, along with University faculty from linguistics and cultural anthropology, to find better ways of translating and interpreting both Hmong and English ways of discussing mental health issues. Representatives from Ramsey and Hennepin counties and Hmong practitioners also are on the task force. The project is becoming “encyclopedic,” Goh says, as they struggle to create a Hmong-English glossary of counseling terms.

As part of a University-awarded President’s Faculty Multicultural Research Grant, Goh and Yang are interviewing Hmong interpreters about their experiences with clients and practitioners in the mental health system.

“One of the mistakes people make is that because there are no directly equivalent ways to talk about difficult feelings they assume that Hmong don’t have these feelings,” Yang says. “Our work will help to communicate how feelings and emotions are talked about in Hmong.”

Goh says the project, begun in 2002, has shown a range of responses among interpreters. “The less experienced say simply that their job is to interpret,” he says. “The more experienced appear readier to help counselors and clients overcome cultural barriers or, in other words, to be a cultural broker. They understand that word-for-word interpretation doesn’t address the cultural semantics and the lack of equivalence in the two languages. This aspect of their work is critical in settings where establishing trust is so important.”

—Peggy Rader