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NAVIGATING E-LEARNING LOCALIZATION

A practical guide for translators, instructional designers and e-learning specialists

Localization workflow: Steps to follow chapter

NAVIGATING E-LEARNING

LOCALIZATION

A practical guide for translators, instructional designers and e-learning specialists

Preparing e-learning materials for a global audience. Internationalization, neutralization, translation and localization

Who’s involved in the process? Key roles and stakeholders

Step 0. Internationalization. Laying the foundation for effective e-learning localization

Localization workflow

Step 1. Finalizing the source version

Step 2. Extracting content for translation

Step 3. Translation

Step 4. Reengineering

Quality assurance: Ensuring the accuracy of localization

Common challenges and possible solutions in e-learning localization

Streamlining e-learning localization with AI: Innovative tools for smarter, faster, and more cost-effective multilingual content

LOCALIZATION WORKFLOW: STEPS TO FOLLOW

THE LOCALIZATION PROCESS: A STEP-BY-STEP OVERVIEW

• Step 0: Plan, design and develop for translation / localization. Internationalization

This is just a gentle reminder of the importance of laying out the foundations of your localization process right at the beginning of your project.

• Step 1: Finalizing the source Version

Ensure the original course is complete and tested before localization begins. Any changes made during the localization phase can lead to inconsistencies across versions and increased costs.

• Step 2: Extracting content for localization

Export text, multimedia, and UI elements for translation. This step often involves creating files such as XLIFF for text and ensuring all multimedia elements are prepared for localization.

• Step 3: Translating and localizing. Reengineering

Translators adapt the text while collaborating with instructional designers to ensure that culturally specific elements are localized appropriately. E-learning specialists manage the technical aspects, ensuring that the translated content is properly implemented within the course.

• Step 4: Testing and review

After localization, the course undergoes a review process. This includes linguistic reviews to check for translation accuracy and technical testing to ensure functionality across different platforms and devices.

Step 1: Finalizing and testing the source version before localization

Before localization begins, the source version of the course must be finalized and thoroughly tested. This includes testing all content, interactions, and multimedia to ensure that the course functions as intended and meets the learning objectives. Any changes made after localization will lead to inconsistencies and additional costs.

Step 2: Extracting content and getting everything ready for translation

After finalizing the source version, the next step is to extract all content that needs to be sent for translation. Based on the needs analysis and the decisions made at the design and development stages, you should be able to identify which elements should be sent for translation, which should be localized – adapted, replaced with existing content or created from scratch – and which should maybe be just discarded because they are not relevant in the target languages/culture.

Getting acquainted with some technical terms: tools and file formats

When localizing e-learning content, it’s important to familiarize yourself with key tools and file formats that streamline the process and ensure consistency across different languages. Here are some essential terms:

• CAT tools (computer-assisted translation tools)

These are specialized tools used by professional translators to manage and streamline the translation process to make it efficient since thanks to CAT tools translators avoid time-consuming re-translation of already translated content. They reduce costs and help maintain consistency by reusing previously translated content and ensuring that terminology remains uniform throughout the project.

• Translation memory

A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores “segments”, which can be sentences, paragraphs, or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”.

Translation memory helps translators to:

• Translate the whole text: translation memory software does not accept empty segments, if you leave something out, it will tell you.

• Translate consistently or help translators translate consistently: every time the translator has to translate, for example, the name of the course, the translation memory will show what the approved translation is.

• Any future changes or updates of the translation of your e-learning project will be done much faster.

In short, translation memory increases translation quality and consistency and reduces production time.

The good news is that translators do not need a license of your authoring tool (Articulate Storyline, Rise, or any other) to open the document as long as they receive the content in xliff format or any other TM-compatible format.

The types of files your content will be sent for translation will change from project to project but often include the following types of files:

• XLIFF files (XML localization interchange file format)

This is a standard format used to exchange translatable text between systems. XLIFF files allow content to be extracted from an e-learning course – developed with Articulate Rise, for example - for translation- while retaining the structure of the original text. You can only open them with a CAT- tool and that is a good thing: it allows for the structured exchange of text between systems while maintaining format and structure. Nothing gets lost, nothing gets broken! After translation, you reimport your file and you will find your formatting, interactive elements and animations intact.

WARNING! When extracting your content from your authoring tool, such as Articulate Rise, any third-party resource you have uploaded – pdf or doc file, images, audio or video files, etc. – will NOT BE EXTRACTED. You have to manage these files separately.

WARNING! If you modify the original file of your e-learning project – in Storyline, Rise, etc. – the translated file in the target language WILL NOT REIMPORT.

• WORD files. This format will serve several purposes:

• Any type of reading or resource to be shared in the course

• Transcripts from audio or videos that are uploaded as pdf in the interactive module.

• Content that cannot be shared in other format because the text is embedded, for example, in infographics, images, videos or interactive tools (Miro, Padlet, Slido...)

Tip: whenever possible, share files in the native format, i.e., rather .doc than .pdf.

• Subtitles in SRT or VTT format

These are file formats used for subtitles and captions in video content. VTT (Web Video Text Tracks) and SRT (SubRip Subtitle) files are critical for localizing multimedia content, ensuring that subtitles or captions align with the translated audio or video content. Most video providers and authoring tools offer good functionalities to caption your videos and extract the subtitles directly in SRT or VTT format.

Step 3: Translating the files

As good practice, this step should start with a meeting between the project manager, learning designers, e-learning developers and translator(s) to cover the following points:

• Detailed list of files with format and word count.

• Terminology guidelines. Depending on the type of course, one or more departments of a company or institution could be involved.

• Access to the e-learning solution.The context will be useful when working on terminology. If possible, grant them access to the course directly on the LMS. Reviewing tools such as Articulate Review will be very helpful here to better understand the content and to ask specific questions in an effective way.

Step 4: Reengineering

Once all files are back from translation, it is time to import and whenever needed, edit the translation back to their corresponding module. This is what is called “reengineering”. The key tasks involved are the following:

• Import the XLIFF files back into your authoring tool. Check that they are properly re-imported without disrupting the layout. For example, some authoring tools have a character limitation in the title. When the target language is longer than the source language, your title might be cut.

• Replace the (.pdf) files of reading, resources, transcripts, etc. with the target language version.

• Edit the images and infographics in the corresponding graphic design tool, export them and replace the source language version with the new version in the target language.

• Replace the source language captions with the target language subtitles and ensure accurate syncing and display, especially if the voice-over has been replaced with the target language. Time codes may need adjustment, as different languages often take more or less time to convey the same message.

• Record the voice-over – or replace the text-to-speech voice over - for audio and video files as well as for narration when applicable. Edit the audio of your media files and replace the source language version with the new target language version.

Hard truths from my e-learning localization projects

Case study: The challenge of coordinating translations

• About the project

One of my most challenging localization projects involved localizing an English e-learning course into French and Spanish using Articulate Rise. While I expected the usual complexities of managing multiple language versions, I hadn’t anticipated the communication and file management challenges that arose.

• The challenge I didn’t have direct access to the translators, which made communication difficult. Instead, all correspondence had to go through the translation service’s project manager. This setup slowed things down and, unfortunately, resulted in a major error. When I received the translated files, the Spanish version worked perfectly, but the French version refused to import back into Articulate Rise. I spent several days troubleshooting, checking the files, and even contacting Articulate support, but nothing seemed to explain why the import failed.

Eventually, I discovered the issue: the French translators had been working with the same source files as the Spanish translators. Be aware that Articulate Rise’s XLIFF file is content-specific, so it can’t be exported from one deliverable and imported into another. Follow the updates on this matter here

How did this happen? Despite my efforts to create and share separate groups of files for each language, the translation project manager, due to an internal administrative procedure, sent the same files to both translators.

• The solution Thankfully, I was working with professional translators who had used CAT tools and translation memory. Once the French translators received the correct files, they quickly ran them through their translation memory, and the problem was resolved. While the project was delayed by a week, I had built a contingency buffer into my timeline, so we still met the final deadline.

• What I learned This experience taught me the importance of direct communication with the translation team. Now, I always schedule a meeting—either in person or virtually—with the translation project manager and/or the translators at the start of the project. During this meeting, we walk through key steps, clarify expectations and needs, and ensure everything is set up correctly from the start. For example, in this case, the issue could have been avoided if I had submitted separate translation requests for each language.

I also emphasize the importance of using CAT tools and translation memory and make sure everyone understands how crucial these tools are for consistency and efficiency. Taking these extra steps upfront has helped me prevent similar issues and streamline the translation process in my projects.

chapter coming next …

Quality assurance: ensuring the quality of e-learning localization

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