Constructing the Chinese MeSH in a Semi-Automatic Way by Using On-Line Translation API

Due to language barrier, it is not quite easy for Chinese users to use the MeSH in manipulating Chinese biomedical articles. MeSH has yet not been translated into Chinese completely. We proposed a semi-automatic approach to construct the Chinese MeSH by using an on-line translation API. Currently, more than 20,000 English MeSH terms have been translated into Chinese. This thesaurus can be used in cross-lingual biomedical information systems. Moreover, we can extend the proposed method to the Chinesization of other controlled vocabularies with minor revision. The database dump file and the translation toolkit are freely available on the project website