You may have noticed in the April issue of the Canadian Oncology Nursing Journal (CONJ) that there has been a change in our approach to translation within the issue. We have embarked on a pilot initiative for one year regarding translation and the April issue marked the beginning. Let me share the rationale for this pilot approach and describe what it is.
The Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology (CANO/ACIO) has been, and continues to be, committed to all members having access to resources in both French and English. In light of that commitment, and in the face of financial constraints, the association has been reviewing exactly what its approach regarding bilingual material ought to be in order to meet the needs of all of the members. We want to determine how best to allocate and spend our available budget for translation—and by translation we mean from English to French and French to English.
As part of our deliberations over this issue, we ran a survey in early January this year asking members about the importance of, and their preferences for, translating a range of association-related materials. These included business materials, educational resources, practice standards, newsletters, and the articles in the CONJ.
The feedback within the survey responses was very similar from both French-speaking and English-speaking members. The responses were well distributed across Canada with 28.75% of all responses coming from members in Quebec. In summary, the responses indicated:
The highest priority area for translation is national practice resources (e.g., standards, position statements, the Pocket Guide, and survivorship modules), followed by the national policies and member renewal forms, and followed by peer reviewed articles in the CONJ.
Half of those who responded did not know that the CANO/ACIO website has Google Translate capacity, and of those who knew about that function on the webpages, only 30% had tried it.
Of all the options for CONJ translation, the respondents indicated the most acceptable change would be to translate the peer reviewed journal articles only; the second choice was to publish the articles in the language of submission, but have extended 750 word abstracts translated instead of the whole article.
The survey feedback and discussions with our Francophone colleagues in the Quebec Chapter of CANO/ACIO, the CANO/ACIO Board, and the CONJ Editorial Committee led to the decision to engage in a pilot approach for translation in the CONJ for one year. At the end of that time, we will evaluate the impact on the CANO/ACIO members and the CONJ readership. Currently that readership includes readers from more than 162 countries around the world. We have a growing number of readers from countries with large French-speaking populations (e.g., France, Belgium, Switzerland, Tunisia).
The pilot approach for translation in the CONJ is to translate the peer reviewed articles (English to French and French to English). The remainder of the issue content (i.e., editorial, features, columns, lectureships, president message) will remain in the language in which it was submitted. In this regard, we will continue to welcome manuscript submissions in English and in French and be able to submit them for peer review in the language of choice.
The pilot approach will allow a third of the current translation budget to be made available for the translation of the newly revised survivorship modules and the Pocket Guide (which have not been translated in the past).
I ask that you pay close attention to each issue in the coming year and be prepared to provide feedback when it is time to evaluate this pilot approach at the end of the year. Your feedback will be important in setting the future direction regarding translation for the CONJ, as well as other resources offered by CANO/ACIO.