Only about 6% of the world are native English speakers while 75% don't don’t speak English at all. Clearly English alone isn’t enough when it comes to making evidence accessible to our target audience: the entire world. This is why Cochrane established a translation strategy at the start of 2014, with the aim of increasing capacity and impact in non-English speaking countries. To do this, we rely on the hard work of local translation teams around the world, who translate Cochrane Reviews into their languages. Thanks to them, we have published more than 23,000 translations across different languages as of the start of 2018
Many people do not have access to high quality health information, because it is not or scarcely available in a language that they understand. We are translating Cochrane evidence to make it more accessible, and to reduce the linguistic barrier to global evidence-informed health decisions. More than 28,000 translations of Cochrane Review plain language summaries and/or abstracts have been published as of June 2019.
Knowledge translation in different languages is led by Cochrane groups in different parts of the world. Cochrane groups translate Reviews and related content of Reviews, such as podcasts or blogshots. But they often also or instead write and disseminate news and other content in their language, do social media, work with professional societies, policy makers, patient groups or the media in their country, and offer training.
Most Cochrane groups have no or very little funding for translations. Some have support from their local funders, for example ministries of health or hosting universities, central Cochrane funding, or temporary grants, but most involve substantial volunteer time.
Get involved
You're a Cochrane group and want to translate Cochrane Reviews or related products? Please contact Juliane Ried.
You would like to participate as a volunteer translator? Join one of our Review translation projects, or TaskExchange.
You would like to stay informed? Join our mailing list for updates on multi-language activities.
How do we do translation at Cochrane?
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