Removing language barriers is one of the most significant challenges for humankind, especially in healthcare. These barriers prevent patients from clearly understanding their clinical conditions, thus making it difficult for them to adhere to necessary therapy correctly. In addition, these barriers limit the access to data and information needed for diagnoses and research. Existing solutions, like interpreter services, cultural mediators, and smartphone apps, aren't able to overcome barriers adequately due to high costs, privacy implications, and poor quality.
Machine translation offers a real solution once it becomes able to provide human-quality translations at reasonable prices. Fortunately, we are not that far from there. As demonstrated by data Translated recently presented at the annual conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, in about 6 years the best professional translators will spend the same amount of time correcting translations done by machines as those done by their peers.
The new UniCamillus Global Health Journal’s website was developed by their technical partner Kromin. It is based on the popular content management system WordPress and directly provides articles in the language of the browser used to access the site, set to default to the device’s language. Users can access the original article without changing the language of the entire website. Through the platform, researchers can submit their work in the original language and, if approved, it will be immediately available in other languages for review, and possibly publication.
With this project, we are taking another step in our mission to allow everyone to understand and be understood in their own language.
