An AI-powered cultural intelligence platform
Lashon helps clinicians and carers speak with patients in their own language — with the cultural respect that care depends on. Not word-for-word translation, but true understanding.
Word-for-word translation
Mo máa ràn ọ́ lọ́wọ́ láti wẹ̀.
Technically correct. But it speaks to an elder as if to a child, ignores modesty, and offers no way to ask permission. It would quietly cause offence at a vulnerable moment.
Lashon cultural intelligence
Màmá, ẹ jọ̀ọ́, màá ràn yín lọ́wọ́ láti wẹ̀, ṣé ó dáa?
Addresses her as a respected elder, uses the honorific and the respectful form, protects her modesty, and asks — rather than tells. This is what being understood sounds like.
The gap in care today
When an older patient speaks Yoruba, Igbo, Somali, Swahili or Hausa, and no interpreter is on the ward, care slows and dignity suffers. Existing translation tools return words — but not the honorifics an elder expects, the modesty that intimate care requires, or the customs that matter most at the end of life. Words alone are not the same as being understood.
What Lashon is
Lashon is an AI-powered cultural intelligence platform. Its first application, Lashon Care, is built for UK health and social care. It gives the person at the bedside the right words and the right cultural manner — so the clinician is understood, and the patient is respected. It is built around four things care actually needs:
Reaching a patient through the language, references and warmth of home — especially where memory or distress makes ordinary speech hard.
The right words, in the right manner, quickly — for the moments where understanding cannot wait for an interpreter to arrive.
Honouring the customs, words and courtesies that matter most at the end of life, when getting it right means everything to a family.
Helping carers, patients and families understand one another — carrying not just the meaning, but the respect the words are meant to hold.
Why Lashon is hard to copy
Anyone can connect an app to a translation engine in a weekend. What cannot be reproduced overnight is Lashon’s verified cultural corpus.
Every phrase is produced by qualified native speakers, recorded with the true tones of the language, and checked through an independent, multi-stage method that captures cultural depth a machine cannot infer on its own — the honorifics, the modesty, the register for an elder, the protocols of a community.
This corpus is built slowly, by trusted people, across five languages. It is the foundation everything else stands on — and it is the reason Lashon cannot simply be copied.
The languages
Beginning with a single language, fully built and verified to the highest standard, before expanding — depth first, then breadth.
Get involved
For NHS teams, care homes and partners. Tell us where you work and how patients’ language needs show up in your setting — we’ll be in touch.