You are interested to join one of our Cochrane Review review translation projects? - That's fantastic! Read below about what to expect as a volunteer translator.
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We currently translate Cochrane Reviews reviews on a regular basis into Chinese (simplified and traditional), Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Thai. Not all of these languages are looking for volunteers. If your language is not included yet, keep reading to learn what else you can do.
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Volunteer translators usually translate plain language summaries, and sometimes also abstracts, of Cochrane Reviews reviews from English into their native language. Learn more about Cochrane Evidence.
Can you choose what you want to translate?
In most translation projects, volunteers can choose which Cochrane Reviews reviews or topics they want to translate. Project managers may propose topics or set certain criteria, for example, to select Reviews reviews that were published in the past 12 months.
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We don't have any rules about how much time you have to invest , and how quickly you have to complete a translation. To give a general idea, one plain language summary translation will take 2-6 hours to complete, depending on the length and difficulty. We appreciate it if volunteers are willing to translate at least 6-12 plain language summaries per year and complete an assigned translation within 2-4 weeks. You will need to learn how to use Phrase , and apply standard terminology and guidance for your language, so it is not very efficient if you sign up and then realise that it's really not the right thing for you, or that you don't have enough time. But we do understand that this may happen and that sometimes other things come up!
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We expect you to be a native speaker of the language you want to translate into, and we are asking you to do a test translation when you first sign up. Any experience in health, translation, writing or editing is an advantage, and some kind of Cochrane training or experience is highly valuable, but in principle, anyone willing to lend their time and skills is welcome. If you are new to Cochrane and evidence-based medicine, please do consider completing the freely available Evidence Essentials training as an introduction.
Please note that our translation project managers periodically review the quota of volunteers for their language in view of their priorities and capacity. They may decide to remove volunteer translators from their team if the translator is no longer active, or as a result of changes to their translation strategy. We will always contact you to explain in such cases.
What is in it for you?
Our volunteers usually see it as a personal reward to contribute to Cochrane, because they believe in what we do and want to be part of our organisation. Contributing as a translator can also be a learning experience and equip you with new skills. We cannot offer payment to our volunteers, but:
- Your name will appear with your published translations to acknowledge your contribution.
- We can provide certificates and references , once you have translated a certain amount.
- Translators can get full, free access to all Cochrane Interactive Learning modules.
- As part of Cochrane's membership scheme, translators who contribute regularly can become active members of Cochrane.
How do you join?
We are currently looking for volunteers to translate from English into the following languages:
- Chinese (simplified and traditional)
- Croatian
- French
- Hungarian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Persian
- Polish
- Romanian
- Russian
- Thai
We ask everyone interested in translating our evidence to provide us with some information and to translate a short section of sample evidence.
To do this, please go to the link here, where you will be asked to log in. If you do not have a Cochrane account yet, you can create one for freeJoin one of our Review translation projects.
What can you do if we don't translate into your language at the moment?
Please take a look at Cochrane Engage, where Cochrane contributors post - translation tasks in a variety of languages , as well as other tasks related to Cochrane Review review production.