Singh Punam Mony, Wight Carly A, Sercinoglu Olcan, Wilson David C, Boytsov Artem, Raizada Manish N
Respirology Program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
J Med Internet Res. 2007 Jun 28;9(2):e18. doi: 10.2196/jmir.9.2.e18.
While it is known that the majority of pages on the World Wide Web are in English, little is known about the preferred language of users searching for health information online.
(1) To help global and domestic publishers, for example health and food agencies, to determine the need for translation of online information from English into local languages. (2) To help these agencies determine which language(s) they should select when publishing information online in target nations and for target subpopulations within nations.
To estimate the percentage of Web publishers that translate their health and food websites, we measured the frequency at which domain names retrieved by Google overlap for language translations of the same health-related search term. To quantify language choice of searchers from different countries, Google provided estimates of the rate at which its search engine was queried in six languages relative to English for the terms "avian flu," "tuberculosis," "schizophrenia," and "maize" (corn) from January 2004 to April 2006. The estimate was based on a 20% sample of all Google queries from 227 nations.
We estimate that 80%-90% of health- and food-related institutions do not translate their websites into multiple languages, even when the information concerns pandemic disease such as avian influenza. Although Internet users are often well-educated, there was a strong preference for searching for health and food information in the local language, rather than English. For "avian flu," we found that only 1% of searches in non-English-speaking nations were in English, whereas for "tuberculosis" or "schizophrenia," about 4%-40% of searches in non-English countries employed English. A subset of searches for health information presumably originating from immigrants occurred in their native tongue, not the language of the adopted country. However, Spanish-language online searches for "avian flu," "schizophrenia," and "maize/corn" in the United States occurred at only <1% of the English search rate, although the US online Hispanic population constitutes 12% of the total US online population. Sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh searches for health information occurred in unexpected languages, perhaps reflecting the presence of aid workers and the global migration of Internet users, respectively. In Latin America, indigenous-language search terms were often used rather than Spanish.
(1) Based on the strong preference for searching the Internet for health information in the local language, indigenous language, or immigrant language of origin, global and domestic health and food agencies should continue their efforts to translate their institutional websites into more languages. (2) We have provided linguistic online search pattern data to help health and food agencies better select languages for targeted website publishing.
虽然已知万维网上的大多数页面是英文的，但对于在线搜索健康信息的用户的首选语言却知之甚少。
（1）帮助全球和国内的发布机构，如健康和食品机构，确定将在线信息从英文翻译成当地语言的必要性。（2）帮助这些机构确定在目标国家以及国内目标亚人群体在线发布信息时应选择哪些语言。
为了估计将其健康和食品网站进行翻译的网络发布机构的比例，我们测量了谷歌检索到的域名对于同一健康相关搜索词的语言翻译的重叠频率。为了量化来自不同国家的搜索者的语言选择，谷歌提供了从2004年1月至2006年4月期间其搜索引擎针对“禽流感”“结核病”“精神分裂症”和“玉米”等术语以六种语言相对于英文进行查询的速率估计值。该估计基于来自227个国家的所有谷歌查询的20%样本。
我们估计80%-90%的健康和食品相关机构不会将其网站翻译成多种语言，即使信息涉及诸如禽流感等大流行性疾病。尽管互联网用户通常受过良好教育，但他们强烈倾向于使用当地语言而非英文来搜索健康和食品信息。对于“禽流感”，我们发现非英语国家中只有1%的搜索是用英文进行的，而对于“结核病”或“精神分裂症”，非英语国家中约4%-40%的搜索使用英文。一部分可能来自移民的健康信息搜索是以他们的母语而非移入国的语言进行的。然而，在美国，西班牙语在线搜索“禽流感”“精神分裂症”和“玉米”的频率仅为英文搜索频率的<1%，尽管美国在线西班牙裔人口占美国在线总人口的12%。撒哈拉以南非洲和孟加拉国对健康信息的搜索使用了意想不到的语言，这可能分别反映了援助工作者的存在以及互联网用户的全球迁移情况。在拉丁美洲，人们经常使用本土语言搜索词而非西班牙语。
（1）基于用户强烈倾向于使用当地语言、本土语言或原籍移民语言在互联网上搜索健康信息，全球和国内的健康和食品机构应继续努力将其机构网站翻译成更多语言。（2）我们提供了语言在线搜索模式数据，以帮助健康和食品机构更好地为目标网站发布选择语言。
