As it is in Russian

it all began with a chat for communication between anaesthesiologists, who created the chief physician of Kommunarka Denis Protsenko. One of the doctors posted there a new Protocol of treatment of patients and asked me to help with translation from Italian. A colleague from Milan, agreed. To help her came a professional translator from St. Petersburg, Mary Yunger, later one of the coordinators of the project. She was invited to chat with other translators. They then created his own.

Language barriers: if necessary, the project participants are volunteers ready to take on the publication in Farsi and Pashto. Now most of the articles translated from English, and when the project started, it was a lot of material in Spanish, Italian, French and German. Individual documents were translated from Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

the most sophisticated scientific publication, full of specialized vocabulary, experts translate free. Select the article for the translations themselves doctors. Subjects the most different, but all around the coronavirus. First, there was the case of the clinical picture, methods of protection of personnel. Now the emphasis has shifted to treatment and vaccine development.

Now in 120 materials. “Previously, we had no selection system, it was enough of a request from the doctor. Try to approach the selection of materials responsibly,” – says the administrator of the project “Interpreters quarantined” Margaret Andress. The selection system is a closed table with names of documents. Several reputable physicians assign grades according to the degree of usefulness of materials: from 0 to 3.

the Speed of the transfer depends strongly on topics and terminology. On average, work on one publication a week maximum. A multi-stage process: the translation is proofed by a specialist, then proofread, typeset for display in the online library. Before the advent of the Telegram channel article again looks at the editor.

The created Telegram-channel has over a thousand subscribers. Information is more than popular: uploaded translations are gaining thousands of views. As, for example, material about disinfection of respirators and masks. Many reviews scored the calculator load hospitals. Translators get a lot of feedback. And not just from Denis Protsenko, whose chat was the starting point of the project. Most website translations are visiting doctors from Russia and Belarus, but there is the interest of specialists from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine. Among the huge flow of information about COVID-19 they are especially important to obtain reliable data.

– On the subject of coronavirus booming not scientific but informative. Different kinds of texts, including outright heresy, spread with lightning speed on social networks and instant messengers. There are a lot ��research dedicated COVID-19, but their methodology is not meant to produce high quality data, – said Vasily Zakharevich, physician-anesthesiologist, researcher MNPC surgery, transplantation and Hematology in Minsk.

Peter Talents, doctor, member of the RAS Commission to counter the falsification of scientific research:

– a peer-Reviewed medical journals, some lowered the threshold of the publications related COVID-19. On the one hand, this is caused by the desire to fulfill a hot topic, with another – the need for the speedy exchange of information. And the result is twofold: a large number of scientific data are rapidly becoming available, but the center of attention at times be of low quality studies. So, for example, was the first French research supposedly showing the efficacy of chloroquine derivatives. The noise rose large, but later findings have not been confirmed.

Journalists often use information from scientific articles and preprints – pre-texts that have not undergone peer review. Everyone wants to be a hero, who found the long-awaited treatment or vaccine. The price of this race can be very high. The initiative of free translations of scientific publications at the request of physicians only noble and worthy of support. But the list can be as desired, high-quality work and poor materials. I hope that professional readers have enough knowledge to distinguish one from the other.