You are interested to join one of our Cochrane Review translation projects? - That's fantastic! Read below about what to expect as a volunteer translator.
You can also read more general information about translation at Cochrane.
We currently translate Cochrane 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.
Review translation projects require a lot of resources. If we don’t translate into your language, then that’s usually because there are no resources, and no one has come forward yet who can initiate a project.
Volunteer translators usually translate plain language summaries, and sometimes also abstracts, of Cochrane Reviews from English into their native language. Learn more about Cochrane Evidence.
In most translation projects, volunteers can choose which Cochrane Reviews or topics they want to translate. Project managers may propose topics or set certain criteria, for example, to select Reviews that were published in the past 12 months.
We use Phrase TMS, a third-party translation management system, which we make freely available to our translators. Volunteer translators are expected to use Phrase and to agree to our translator terms. Project managers and experienced volunteers work as editors and will review your work before it is published. They will provide you with instructions and supporting materials. You can also contact them if you have questions or if you need advice.
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!
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.
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:
Join one of our Review translation projects.
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 production.