Access to reliable medical information can be a matter of life and death. Yet for billions of people worldwide, health information remains locked behind language barriers. This is the challenge that Wiki Project Med Foundation (WPMEDF) set out to address when they launched MDWiki, a collection of health care articles ready to be translated into Wikipedia. With the help of Translators without Borders, CLEAR Global’s community of linguists, they’re making excellent progress.
From its inception, WPMEDF’s mission has been straightforward and ambitious: “To make clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice online and off.“
While speakers of powerful languages such as English enjoy abundant medical content online, the same cannot be said for speakers of many other languages.
A community-driven approach
The process begins with a small group of physicians who write and refine short summaries of key health topics in English. These articles are extensively reviewed, updated, and fully referenced before being stored on MDWiki.org, ready for translation. This is where the Translators without Borders community steps in, working to make this essential content available across nine languages. People who speak Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Swahili, Arabic, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Turkish, and Czech now have resources available to understand more about their conditions, ailments, or preventive care.
The collaboration between WPMEDF and CLEAR Global represents a powerful model for democratizing medical knowledge. By connecting expert medical content creators with skilled volunteer translators, we’re bridging gaps that would otherwise leave millions without access to essential health information.
Learning and adapting
The journey hasn’t been without its challenges. When the project began in 2011, the team translated entire articles that were typically thousands of words long. This proved overwhelming for both content creators and translators. After receiving feedback from the Swahili community that they couldn’t maintain such extensive content, WPMEDF made a crucial pivot: focusing on three to four paragraph overviews instead. This shift allowed them to dramatically expand their scope and tackle a much broader range of topics.
Other lessons emerged along the way. Using simpler language in the source content proved essential, as many languages lack technical medical vocabulary. Since most translators, including those volunteering through Translators without Borders, are not healthcare professionals themselves, accessible language makes their crucial work possible. The team also learned that while machine translation can serve as a starting point for some translators, expert human translators remain indispensable for ensuring accuracy and cultural relevance.
Millions of views and growing
The numbers tell a compelling story. In-depth data available since 2021 shows that articles have accumulated more than 20 million pageviews, and over 1.2 million words have been translated as part of this project’s relaunch.
Translation is only part of the solution. The team also works to ensure content reaches those who need it most, even in areas without reliable internet access. They for example assemble and distribute Internet-in-a-Box (a miniature server that provides offline access to Wikipedia and MDWiki), they’re addressing the “last mile” problem, bringing medical knowledge to communities that would otherwise be completely cut off from these resources.
The long-term vision is ambitious but achievable: one goal is enabling all healthcare providers to study in their primary language if they choose. By reducing this barrier to becoming a healthcare professional, the project aims to improve healthcare access in the regions that need it most.
The collaboration continues to evolve and grow. What began as informal Wikipedia editing in 2007-2008 has developed into a structured, impactful initiative. After incorporating WPMEDF in 2012 and moving content to MDWiki in 2020 for better translation workflows, the project continues to refine its approach.
In an increasingly connected world, language should not determine whether someone can access life-saving medical information. Through the dedicated work of organizations like WPMEDF and the volunteer translators at CLEAR Global, this new vision is becoming a reality.