We translate Cochrane evidence to help people around the world make evidence-informed health decisions.

Only 6% of people in the world speak English as a first language. 75% of the world’s population don’t speak English at all. Many people do not have access to high quality health information, because it is not readily available in a language that they understand.

Cochrane groups in different parts of the world lead our translation activities. They volunteer a large amount of time to translate the content of Cochrane reviews, such as plain language summaries and abstracts, and key webpages that describe our work.

Read our evidence in different languages

At the top of the cochrane.org homepage, you can see all the languages in which our plain language summaries of Cochrane reviews and key webpages are available.

Plain language summaries alone are available in even more languages. At the top of a plain language summary, you can see the available languages. The number of languages listed for each plain language summary may vary, as our translation teams work through our evidence.

We have published more than 54,000 translations of Cochrane plain language summaries across 20 languages as of January 2025.

Help translate Cochrane evidence

Most Cochrane groups have no funding for their translation and knowledge translation activities. This work would not be possible without the support of our translator community, most of which is done by volunteers. Many groups also share evidence on social media, carry out training, and work with professional societies, policy makers, patient groups or the media in their own languages.

Hundreds of volunteers have already translated thousands of plain language summaries of Cochrane reviews. If you are interested in supporting this initiative, you could help break down linguistic barriers to health evidence, and earn points towards Cochrane Membership.

Find out which languages we are currently looking for, what to expect as a volunteer translator, and more on our Translating for Cochrane knowledge base.

"Participating in Cochrane's multi-language programme has been a highly rewarding experience, enabling me to contribute to the dissemination of reliable health evidence to a wider audience while enhancing my own skills and knowledge." Inès Belalem, French translation team

"Editing Cochrane translations expanded my knowledge beyond paediatric infectious diseases and taught me the nuances of translating English into Thai. Choosing the correct Thai word is crucial, a task machine translation can't yet handle." Pagakrong Lumbiganon, Thai translation team

We ask everyone interested in translating our evidence to provide us with some information, and to translate a short section of sample evidence. You can do this at our Become a translator page, where you will be asked to log in. If you do not have a Cochrane account, the link will take you to a page where you can create a free account.