Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Cochrane Croatia started translating the Plain Language Summaries (PLS) of Cochrane Reviews into Croatian in 2013 to overcome the language barrier. Initially, translations were mainly completed by two volunteer staff members of Cochrane Croatia. Crowdsourcing was identified as a potential low-resource approach to increase translation capacity.
Objectives: To test the involvement of volunteer medical students and health professionals in translating PLS into Croatian and to measure the impact on production of translations.
Methods: In July 2014, we started inviting students and university colleagues to participate as volunteers in our translation project. A public call was also published through the Cochrane Croatia Facebook page, Cochrane Croatia website and in the University newspapers. Medical school teachers incorporated translation of one PLS as a mandatory part of the exam in research methodology courses, and some of the students volunteered to translate more after the exam. We developed supporting material describing the translation process and guidelines. All translations submitted by the volunteers are checked and edited by Cochrane Croatia’s volunteer staff to ensure accuracy and consistency. Volunteers are acknowledged along with the published translations.
Results: Fifty-six volunteers signed up to contribute translations (as of February 2015). In the first 18 months of the translation project, prior to adopting a crowdsourcing approach, we translated about 200 PLS. Within the first six months of crowdsourcing we were able to complete 350 additional PLS translations – about five times more than before. Volunteer time of the two project administrators devoted to the translation project approximately doubled after introduction of crowdsourcing.
Conclusion: Involving volunteers using a crowdsourcing approach and assigning translations to students as a part of their medical curriculum substantially increased our capacity to translate Cochrane evidence, but it required significantly more volunteer time from the translation managers.
Objectives: To test the involvement of volunteer medical students and health professionals in translating PLS into Croatian and to measure the impact on production of translations.
Methods: In July 2014, we started inviting students and university colleagues to participate as volunteers in our translation project. A public call was also published through the Cochrane Croatia Facebook page, Cochrane Croatia website and in the University newspapers. Medical school teachers incorporated translation of one PLS as a mandatory part of the exam in research methodology courses, and some of the students volunteered to translate more after the exam. We developed supporting material describing the translation process and guidelines. All translations submitted by the volunteers are checked and edited by Cochrane Croatia’s volunteer staff to ensure accuracy and consistency. Volunteers are acknowledged along with the published translations.
Results: Fifty-six volunteers signed up to contribute translations (as of February 2015). In the first 18 months of the translation project, prior to adopting a crowdsourcing approach, we translated about 200 PLS. Within the first six months of crowdsourcing we were able to complete 350 additional PLS translations – about five times more than before. Volunteer time of the two project administrators devoted to the translation project approximately doubled after introduction of crowdsourcing.
Conclusion: Involving volunteers using a crowdsourcing approach and assigning translations to students as a part of their medical curriculum substantially increased our capacity to translate Cochrane evidence, but it required significantly more volunteer time from the translation managers.