Lao document translation
Clinical document translation into Lao for healthcare teams.
136,500 people in the U.S. speak Lao at home.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Darker states have more Lao speakers; shading is logarithmic, relative to the state with the most speakers.
| State | Speakers |
|---|---|
| Minnesota | 7,424 |
| Tennessee | 6,231 |
| Arkansas | 4,775 |
| Iowa | 4,345 |
| Kansas | 3,357 |
| Rhode Island | 3,014 |
The 6 states with the most Lao speakers
State counts reflect the 15 most reported non-English languages in each state’s ACS table. States where Lao falls outside the top 15 are shown without shading; the national total includes every state.
The ACS groups Lao with other Tai-Kadai languages; figures are for that full group.
66,550
speakers of Lao speak English less than “very well”: the federal threshold for needing language assistance.
49%
of Lao speakers in the U.S. meet that limited-English definition.
7,424
people speak Lao at home in Minnesota alone.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Meet Opalite.
Real-time AI medical interpretation in 150+ languages and dialects, connecting providers and patients in seconds.
- Works on the devices care teams already carry: phones, tablets, computers, and telehealth platforms
- Integrates with all EHRs
- Built for HIPAA-compliant healthcare
- SOC 2 Type II attested security controls
What to know when translating Lao
Every language has grammar that a translator must handle correctly. These are the Lao features that the fewest other languages in the world share, according to the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS).
Tai-Kadai · Kam-Tai · Eurasia
6.3%
of the world’s languages share this trait
Lao has a negative word that behaves partly like a verb, so a translator must recognize it as a denial rather than an action of its own.
WALS 112A · Negative Morphemes · Negative word, unclear if verb or particle
9.2%
of the world’s languages share this trait
Lao has no plural ending at all, so a translator must ask whether “tablet” means one or several.
9.4%
of the world’s languages share this trait
Lao places “not” between the subject and the verb, so the denial arrives before the action and a translator must carry it through the rest of the sentence.
WALS 144A · Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb · SNegVO
How Lao is structured
- Word ordersubject, object and verb
- SVO
- Adpositionsprepositions or postpositions
- Prepositions
- Adjectivebefore or after the noun
- Noun-Adjective
- Demonstrativethis and that, before or after
- Noun-Demonstrative
- Numeralnumber before or after the noun
- Noun-Numeral
- Genitivepossessor before or after
- Noun-Genitive
- Relative clausebefore or after the noun
- Noun-Relative clause
- Morphologyprefixing or suffixing
- Little affixation
- Tonewhether pitch changes meaning
- Not coded
- Casesnumber of noun cases
- Not coded
- Gendersnumber of noun genders
- Not coded
- Classifierscounting words for nouns
- Not coded
Source: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013. WALS Online, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. Lao entry: wals.info LAO. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Values are reproduced as WALS codes them; each links to its datapoint. The clinical readings are Opalite’s own inferences and are not part of WALS.
FAQs about Lao document translation
Three states hold 14% of the nation’s Lao speakers, and Lao ranks in the published top-15 language tables of 6 states.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Opalite offers Lao document translation using the same underlying language techniques that support its interpretation platform. Opalite’s published validation study evaluated spoken interpretation in Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese and reported over 90% fewer errors than certified medical interpreters across those clinical conversations.
