Transcending
language barriers to environmental science.

Ignoring non-English-language studies may bias ecological meta-analyses

Excluding non-English studies risks changing the outcome of meta-analyses

Languages are still a major barrier to global science

Over a third of global scientific knowledge may be available only in non-English languages

Embrace linguistic diversity

See the coverage of our work by Nature

Science’s English dominance hinders diversity

See the coverage of our work by Science

See the latest news from translatE

Our mission

One third of global scientific knowledge may currently be ignored because it is available only in languages other than English. On the other hand, about half of decision makers may not be utilizing scientific evidence that is available only in English.

Clearly, tackling any global challenge, including the biodiversity crisis, hinges on the smooth flow of scientific information globally, yet this flow is severely hampered by the existence of language barriers. The translatE project applies scientific approaches to address this important, yet often overlooked challenge of transcending language barriers in science, with the aim of maximising scientific contributions to the conservation of the earth’s environment.

We believe that scientific communities need more concerted efforts for understanding and overcoming language barriers. If you are interested in our project, please get in touch with us. Let’s work together to tackle this important challenge.

Funding

translatE is funded by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT180100354) and the University of Queensland strategic funding.

Keep Updated

Sign up to receive email notifications when we publish new News.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Read our latest Publications

Gain an insight into the TRANSLATE project by viewing our our latest peer-reviewed publications.

Our latest news

A new careers article published in the journal Science explains how language barriers hinder diversity in science, excluding a wide

We are excited to issue our October 2020 update on the project progress. We have finally finished the screening of

You can now see Tatsuya's presentation "Flying over the Tower of Babel: Implications of language barriers on shorebird conservation" in