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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 2849,000 translations of Cochrane Review plain language summaries and/or abstracts across 15 20 languages on the Cochrane Library and cochrane.org as of June 2019January 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.
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You're a Cochrane group and want to translate Cochrane Reviews or related products? Please contact Juliane Ried 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 TaskExchange.You would like to stay informed? Join our mailing list for updates on multi-language activities 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 15 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.
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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.
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As with Reviews, our translation workflows take place in a highly automated and standardised technology infrastructure, so we can produce and publish the a large volume of translations efficiently. We use Memsource Phrase, a third-party translation management system, which we make freely available for our translators. Memsource Phrase is connected to our Review production and publication infrastructure, so we can send Reviews to Memsource Phrase for translation, and translations from Memsource Phrase to our websites, automatically.
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Most of our projects involve volunteer translators, and the project managers often contribute on a volunteer - basis, too. The majority of our volunteers have a health-related background, while few are linguists or translators. 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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Machine translation and post-editing
Some Most of our teams use off-the-shelf or custom machine translation in combination with human post-editing to speed up their workflow, but we do not publish unedited machine translations.
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