Only about 6% of the world world’s population are native English speakers, while 75% don't of people 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.
How do we do translation at Cochrane?
As with other Cochrane work, our translation activities build on Cochrane’s key principles, notably: promoting access, enabling wide participation and building on the enthusiasm of individuals. Our translation work relies on the contribution of local Cochrane groups and individuals who in many cases do not receive funding for translations. We support translation activities in many languages, if there is a group of people willing to invest their time, ensure quality, and collaborate with us. An overview of our projects can be found here.
Many people do not have access to high-quality health information, because it is not readily available in a language that they understand. We translate Cochrane evidence to make it more accessible, and to reduce the linguistic barrier to global evidence-informed health decisions. We have published more than 49,000 translations of Cochrane Review plain language summaries and/or abstracts across 20 languages on the Cochrane Library and cochrane.org as of January 2024.
Cochrane groups in different parts of the world lead our knowledge translation activities in different languages. They translate Reviews and related Review content, such as podcasts or blogshots. But they typically 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.
A list of translation projects is available on the Cochrane community website.
Get involved
You're a Cochrane group and want to translate Cochrane Reviews or related products? Please contact Judith Deppe.
You would like to participate as a volunteer translator? Read more about what to expect as a volunteer translator in one of our Review translation projects, or join Cochrane Engage.
What we translate
Our priority is to translate and disseminate Cochrane Reviews. All teams translate the plain language summaries, some also the abstracts or other main text sections, of the Review. These translations are published with the English Review on the Cochrane Library and on their own version of cochrane.org, which has been translated into 20 languages and can be browsed and searched in those languages, too. In addition, teams may translate related Review content (podcasts, blogshots, press releases, special collections, featured Reviews and news items), training materials, etc.
How we prioritize Reviews for translation
The local context, culture, and resources vary for each of our translation teams, and this affects how they set priorities. They generally focus on recently published Reviews. Some select Reviews for translation based on their expertise in specific areas of health; based on what topics are most relevant in their country, or to their funders and partners; and they often let translators focus on their interests and expertise.
How we do translation at Cochrane
As with Reviews, our translation workflows take place in a highly automated and standardised technology infrastructure, so we can produce and publish a large volume of translations efficiently. We use Phrase, a third-party translation management system, which we make freely available for our translators. Phrase is connected to our Review production and publication infrastructure, so we can send Reviews to Phrase for translation, and translations from Phrase to our websites, automatically.
All translation All teams use one or a combination of the following approaches to translation:
Volunteer translation
Most of our projects work with volunteersinvolve volunteer translators, and the project managers often invest their spare timecontribute on a volunteer basis, too. The majority of our volunteer translators volunteers have a health-related background, while some of them few are linguists or translators. Many students volunteer as an opportunity Some of our volunteers are students in health or language studies and contribute to Cochrane in order to learn and gain experience.
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Professional translation is expensive, and therefore only a few of our projects work with paid professional translators on a regular basis. Languages that use professionals have their translations reviewed by health experts professionals to ensure accuracy.
Machine translation and post-editing
Although we do not publish unedited machine translations, we are exploring statistical and domain-adapted Most of our teams use off-the-shelf or custom machine translation in combination with human post-editing as part of research projects, and some languages publish post-edited machine translations. Depending on the language and underlying machine translation engine, this is potentially a way to make translation more efficient and less costly.
What do we translate?
Our priority is to translate and disseminate Cochrane Reviews. As our Reviews are large documents, translations are mostly limited to abstracts and/or plain language summaries of the Review. These translations are published with the English Review on the Cochrane Library and on their own version of cochrane.org, which has been translated into 14 languages and has multilingual search functionality.
How do we prioritize?
Projects differ according to local set-ups, culture, and funding, and this also affects how they set priorities. While they generally focus on recent publications, some teams select Reviews for translation based on their expertise in specific areas of health. They also choose Reviews because they are of particular interest in their country, and they make their decision based on priorities of their funders or partners, or let volunteers focus on their interests and expertise. to speed up their workflow, but we do not publish unedited machine translations.