Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/History

Current efforts have moved to HERE

The Healthcare Translation Task Force – brings high quality, easy to understand health information into as many languages as possible.

It was originally created as a joint venture between WikiProject Medicine, Wiki Project Med Foundation, and Translators Without Borders. We translated together over 1,900 articles in more than 90 languages! This translated content is getting about 40 million views a year.

Over 5.7 million words of Wikipedia medical content were translated by volunteers in the TWB workspace during the 2011-2018 period. Our heartfelt thanks to the many Translators without Borders contributions to this first stage of the project.

At the beginning of 2019 this project is being relaunched primarily within the Wikipedia - Wikimedia environment, making use of a native translation tool and a translation management tool made available by ProZ.com.

Texts are translated where they are needed the most; currently: diseases, medications and drugs, anatomy, nutrition, sanitation, and women's health. To see our list of articles for translation check out: our summaries.

Language shouldn't be a barrier for health information!

 What's happening

Get involved


 * Community organization
 * We need Wikipedians to engage the community on the different Wikipedias.


 * Assessing content
 * We need local-language speakers to determine which articles need to be translated into the target language.


 * Translating
 * We are always on the look-out for dedicated translators to work directly with our content, especially in smaller languages!


 * Posting jobs on Translators Without Borders website
 * We need people to manage languages. This involves posting new translation jobs on the TWB website.


 * Integration
 * Translated articles need to be integrated into local Wikipedias. This process is done manually and needs to be in harmony with existing local articles.


 * Template installation
 * For translations to be more useful templates and modules should be installed. We need people with the technical know-how to help out.


 * Programming
 * Several of our processes are in need of simplification and many could be improved with bots.


 * Writing content for the translation project
 * Writing for translations may be slightly different from writing other articles on Wikipedia. If you are interested in improving articles contact James Heilman (jmh649@gmail.com) or simply create a Wikipedia account and start editing.

Why help?

Wikipedia is the most used health care resource on the Internet−both by unique visitors and by pageviews. For all those interested in global health this is an opportunity to help bring high quality healthcare information to the world.

In the beginning effort primarily concentrated on 80 medical articles of global significance. In the month of February 2012 these pages in English received a total of 10.6 million page views.

In 2014 we switched our efforts to a larger number of shorter articles as we believe translating more short articles rather than fewer long articles will have a greater impact. A more in depth breakdown can be found at popular pages of the translation taskforce

As of July 2014, the more than 500 full articles translated via this project received over 1.2 million pages views per month in their local languages.

 Press


 * "Antidote for a stigma: Translated content on vaccines helps fight a taboo", Times of India, October 22, 2016
 * "Making Wikipedia’s medical articles accessible in Chinese", Wikimedia Blog, June 2, 2015
 * "A Fight for Awareness in the Age of Globalization", Huffington Post, October 2, 2014
 * "Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap", Global Voices & Wikimedia Blog, July 27, 2014
 * "Translating Health Content Without Borders", Global Voices, August 30, 2012
 * "Leveraging the Web to Overcome Challenges in the Developing World", EContent Magazine, July 5, 2012
 * "Translators fight the fatal effects of the language gap" The Guardian, April 11, 2012

 Get in touch!

Doc James Dr. James Heilman jmh649@undefinedgmail.com ER Physician, Project Lead

CFCF Carl Fredrik Sjöland cfsjoland@undefinedgmail.com Medical student, Project Coordinator

This project has partly been funded by Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grants and partly by personal contribution from Dr. James Heilman