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Breaking Language Barriers: Crowdsourced Translations for Academics

Anna Murphy

Kelly Fang

Ege Kabasakaloglu

Carolina Moura

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Motivation

  • “There is a plethora of research in non-English-language papers that gets lost in translation, or is never translated, creating a gap in the global community’s scientific knowledge. As the amount of scientific research grows, so does the gap”
  • Existing volunteer translation efforts face problems with collaboration and recruiting volunteers for larger projects
  • We want to democratize access to online educational content for non-English speakers

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Our solution

  • Crowdsourced translations for educational and research materials
  • Genius-style annotation interface for easy collaboration
  • Rank accuracy of translations by upvoting, export compiled translations

“The Great Gatsby” annotations in Genius

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Measuring Impact

  • The number of total translations measures user engagement
  • The number of unique translated languages measures reach
  • Amount of upvotes measures translation quality

Massachusetts Institute of Technology