Well, one obvious short-cut solution is to dump a recommended foreign-language paper into some free online translation software and see what you get. Maybe it's good enough for practical purposes. The seven best free online translation software are supposedly Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, Reverso, Yandex Translate, Translate Dict, SYSTRAN, and DeepL. From fairly extensive experience with the first two and Systran, I personally consoder the results poor, but they may be acceptable for the kind of laparoscopic training materials described here.
Are there any other long- or short-term solutions to the hegemony of English? Multi-language abstracts would probably not be good enough for this purpose.,..
Chris Zielinski
Centre for Global Health, University of Winchester, UK and
President, World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)
Blogs; http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com
Publications: http://www.researchgate.net and https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/
HIFA Profile: Chris Zielinski held senior positions at the World Health Organization for 15 years, in Africa, WHOs Geneva Headquarters, and India, and earlier in other UN-system organizations working in writing, media, publishing, knowledge management, and intellectual property. He also spent three years as Chief Executive of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (looking after the intellectual property revenues of all UK authors and journalists). Chris was the founder of the ExtraMED project (Third World biomedical journals on CD-ROM), and managed the Gates Foundation-supported Health Information Centres project. At WHO he was appointed to the Ethical Review Committee, and was an originator of the African Health Observatory during his years in Brazzaville. With interests in the information, and computer ethics and bioethics, Chris has edited numerous books and journals and worked as a translator. Now working independently, Chris has recently finished writing a travel book called Afreekinout. Email: chris AT chriszielinski.com