Translating Quick Core 60 into Lao: Minutes rather than days of work
The biggest headache when adapting AAC for a new language is always the sheer amount of time it eats up. We've heard of simple vocabulary translations dragging on for weeks—just copy, paste, translate, and that's before you even get the file to a proper translator. We recently saw how much easier this can be when we were working with Kongmeng, a Child Life Therapist at the Lao Friends Hospital for Children (LFHC) in Laos when he wanted Quick Core 60 Translated.
Quick Core 60, is a motor-planning based vocabulary, that was created by OpenAAC in the Open Board Format. The full package has 61 pages and 1,970 buttons, all of which required translation.
Doing this manually is a massive chore. Translating nearly 2,000 individual button labels - and the spoken messages, which are sometimes different from the label - means enduring an incredibly boring and repetitive process.
If you conservatively estimate just 15 seconds per button for the copy/paste/translate cycle, the total time adds up quickly:
- 1,970 buttons x 15 seconds each = 29,550 seconds
- That's 492.5 minutes, or 8.2 hours of non-stop work.
In reality, busy clinicians report this job spreads across several working days and is incredibly boring let alone costly in time!
Kongmeng used the AAC Tools platform instead. The process was simple:
- Upload the Quick Core 60 file.
- Press Translate to Lao.
- Wait around 10 minutes.
- Download the fully translated version.
Because Kongmeng is a native Lao speaker, he could quickly review the output. The result was a complete, usable Lao vocabulary generated in minutes. Critically, only 20% (394 buttons) required manual correction; the other 1,576 buttons were correct right away. This let him focus on the most important part: clinical and cultural accuracy, not hours of copy-pasting.
As Kongmeng's colleague told us: "On a very positive note you saved Kongmeng hours of translation. He's very happy!"
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