Increasing Accessibility to Neuroscience Through Translation: Going Beyond the English Language

Abstract

Declaring the 1990's as The Decade of the Brain put the field of neuroscience at the forefront of public attention, with the nervous system becoming a subject of increasing interest in popular media. Although this has generally brought large swaths of the public closer to neuroscience, most current research is published and disseminated in a single language: English. This is unsurprising as English is indeed the lingua franca in scientific circles, but people around the world communicate in many other languages. To make neuroscience accessible to a larger audience, we share an initiative to translate the Knowing Neurons platform into a second language: Spanish. This collaborative project integrates Humanities and STEM academic programs to make use of bilingual university students, in association with professional linguists and neuroscientists, to translate scientific content into a relatable format to Spanish speakers regardless of their country of origin. The translation effort was piloted within the framework of undergraduate outreach courses at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and is coupled with outreach components targeting the Spanish-speaking community to promote this new resource. This project aims to foster an environment where the neuroscientific interests of the public, college students, instructors, and researchers coalesce in a unified space. We hope that opening new lines of communication with traditionally underrepresented communities might help combat the persistent lack of diversity in neuroscience (and STEM) that is currently seen in academia. We also provide an outline to inspire others to translate these, and similar resources, into other languages.

Significance statement Despite the rise in neuroscience-related news in the past few decades, barriers to the integration of neuroscience in social discourse still exist. Scientific illiteracy stemming from the lack of resources generated for public consumption is compounded when considering they are mostly only available in English. Because of this, neuroscience remains an unfamiliar topic to many individuals. Additionally, the Humanities and STEM have traditionally been siloed in distinct academic departments providing little opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration. Our project provides an outline for how to integrate these disciplines to translate neuroscience into a second language, increasing accessibility to a worldwide audience. For the collaborative nature and impact of this project, we were honored with the 2022 Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award.