NHS spends more than £113m on translation services including 'fake' cartoon language

Avon and Wiltshire NHS Trust provided translations in 122 languages for its users - the most in the UK according to the results of an FOI. The TaxPayers’ Alliance found that overall, the NHS spent more than £113m on interpreter services, including a fictional language, between 2019 and 2022.

The NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde had the highest spend at £8.8m over the three years. The most commonly-provided languages were Polish, Romanian, Chinese and Arabic.

The FOI found that Wiltshire's Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust offered translation services for a fictional language called 'Entean', which is derived from anime and a form of English using a shuffled alphabet.

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Dominic Hardisty, chief executive of Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust said: “It is important we make our information available to the diverse communities we serve to ensure that everyone has equal access to our services”.

According to the data, if all NHS trusts had responded, the total spending on interpreters and translation services by the NHS between 2019 and 2022 would be more than £174m - over £60.3 million higher than the total of the responses the TPA reported on.

The TPA recommends the trust look to cut costs by making more use of ready-translated and pooling resources. Here is a breakdown of NHS Trust's spending on interpreters and translation services.

NHS trusts with the highest spending between 2019-20 to 2021-22

NHS trust	2019-20 spending (£)	2020-21 spending (£)	2021-22 spending (£)	Total spending (£)
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	3,696,199	2,396,896	2,760,581	8,853,676
Barts Health	1,811,048	1,794,861	1,927,480	5,533,389
NHS Lothian	1,468,704	1,120,369	1,703,790	4,292,863
Homerton Healthcare	1,122,678	954,009	1,190,000	3,266,687
Bradford Teaching Hospitals	840,000	810,426	889,216	2,539,642
Central and North West London	770,000	753,000	938,000	2,461,000
Leeds Teaching Hospitals	1,234,612	557,711	562,512	2,354,835
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board	752,677	502,640	780,862	2,036,179
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health	583,306	677,174	725,396	1,985,876
Derby and Burton Hospitals	653,808	433,872	690,882	1,778,562

The most frequently offered languages between 2019-20 to 2021-22

Language and dialect	Number of trusts
Polish	116
Romanian	116
Chinese (Cantonese)	113
Arabic (all dialects)	112
Bengali	110
Farsi	110
Portuguese	109
Dari	108
Russian	107

The NHS has an obligation to provide translation services to users, free at the point of delivery. It also has a legal responsibility to make sure its services are accessible to all.

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