Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hubei, China (R.S.)

Background: A critical marker of high-quality systematic reviews is the identification and inclusion of all relevant, important studies. Up to 78% of systematic reviews have language restrictions; as a consequence, most reviews (93%) exclude at least 1 randomized controlled trial (RCT) (1). A 2012 study assessing Google Translate for translating non–English-language studies recommended caution in using this service (2). Recently, Google updated its translation engine, reporting that it is markedly more accurate than previous versions (3).

Objective: To examine the agreement between native-language and Google-translated abstractions of clinical trials published in languages other than English.

Methods and Findings: We searched ...