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.

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Read our latest Publications

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

Our latest news

Two honours projects, at the University of Queensland, on language barriers in conservation science are now available and we are

Tatsuya gave a talk on the aims and progress of the translatE project at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation

A correspondence article "Monolingual searches can limit and bias results in global literature reviews" has just been published in Nature