What this palliative care doctor thinks:

It’s not just about language, that’s why Google translate can’t replace human interpreters at the moment. It might be able to translate the words literally from one language to another but it doesn’t yet have the cultural context of where the words came from. The history of the language has not been programmed into it. Take English for example a lot of the words we use are derived from French and other Latin-based languages. You don’t ask for sheep meat, you ask for mutton from the French mouton. Similarly beef, not cow meat, from the French boeuf. A translator program is not the same as an interpreter program. Google Interpret would have to be much more sophisticated and would need cultural programming as well as linguistic programming.

A person may be speaking Chinese, but they are also living Chinese. The food that they eat, the clothes that they wear. Rituals that they follow to celebrate life, and how they deal with death and dying are the missing parts of a person’s identity that cannot be easily translated.
The most important tool I have as a palliative care doctor is my ability to communicate. I make a point of greeting my patients in their native language as much as possible. My accented version of their language is my attempt at providing them with a hint of familiarity. In the area I work in people come from all over the world, from lots of different cultures, with over 200 different languages spoken in our area. I certainly do not know all the greetings that are available but a quick Google search can provide me with at least a few words of greeting. A little demonstration of respect that I have made the effort to try to connect with another human being. It may have taken me ten seconds to type in my query but it can often bring a smile to a weary sufferer, whose illness has taken over their body. Someone for whom English may be a second or third language. A little snippet of home, can make a real difference.