Best Practice: Multi-Language Course

Hi, Jason -- Thanks so much for reaching out here! And while I will defer to your fellow community members to share their own advice and ideas, I did want to pass along the following discussions related to multiple languages in one course:

• Building Multiple Language Versions in One Course?
• languages launch page
• Multiple Languages in Storyline

And I wanted to note that you are also welcome to seek out additional opinions over in our Building Better Courses forum, as well. 

Thank you Christie!!! :-)

Just for your sanity while working, I would definitely break this up.

Have you considered embedding a Storyline project within itself? 

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/embedding-published-story-into-a-story

Thank you Ben!!! ;-) I will definitely look at that option as well when I start diving into this. Thank you for confirming the sanity aspect. Cheers, Jason

Hi Jason -

Oh my! A 1340-slide monster module seems inadvisable for lots of reasons - so your instinct to split it up seems spot-on to me. 

As to how to design the language selection screen, it depends on what else is on that screen - but I'd go for a nice graphic representation (shapes with the name of the language in that same language in each one) - rather than a drop-down. Just seems more appealing to me.

Best of luck to you. What a project! 

Jackie

Thank you dear Jackie!!! ;-)

I'd never do it but I've seen various versions of something like this.

• Using states for anything containing text. A language selection screen will set a variable that will set the required language state. I would not recommend that when using 20 languages but it could work with a couple.
• Scenes. A seperate scene for each language. Again it would probably be a nightmare to do that for 20 languages. The range of variables and object names you'd have to consider. Plus tracking completion... brrr don't even want to go there.
• The smart choice: Do NOT create all languages but create a language version for each. Your LMS will probably allow to put them together on a course page/learning plan with a setting that one of the items completed means the entire learning plan is competed.

I've done dozens of translation projects and each language is a project on its own. I've never had all languages done at the same moment but because we do everything as a stand-alone version we are able to deliver the languages as they are done (another pro). If someone would hire me to do 20 languages in one course I'd probably try to explain all the downsides of such a project. If they would be adamant I'd either not take the job or tell them to quadruple their budget.

Hope that helps!

Yes, yes dear Jeff! Very helpful - thank you!!! I really appreciate everyone's feedback and encouragement here - danke schön.

Thank you for your confirmation Matthew! ;-)

I agree with Jeff that the smart choice is to create a different version for each and make them equivalents within the learning plan in your LMS system. You could also create equivalent learning plans for different languages. It's just too complicated to create triggers within a single module for different languages. I can see it bogging down the player and you would need to be very detailed and diligent in your testing of every angle.

Bravo! Thank you Courtney for your reassurance. Much appreciated. :-)

Jason;

I did a large project that was only English, French and it was a challenge enough.  I was able to break it up into modules and do both languages separately which helped.  I was able to link all of the modules together using web objects with a central menu.  I am completely unfamiliar with your thought of replacing images throughout the modules through an image bank.  If it is possible I look forward to hearing how.

Good luck with your project.

Tim

Thank you Tim!!! ;-)

I would never attempt 1380 slides in presenter, storyline dependent on content should be OK.

I would however do the languages as different courses, you cannot localise the player unless you split into separate courses.

Phil makes a good point about the player only being limited to a single language for each course. We often do two languages, English-French, English-Italian, etc., and have created new language sets for the player where we've added both languages to the translation. For example we create a language set called "ENFR" for English/French. Then we modify it so it contains both, e.g, "Yes/Oui" and "No/Non". It's kind of clunky but it works. For the "Next" and "Previous" buttons we just use the greater-than and less-than characters: < > with no words at all.

Thank you Phil!!! ;-) Wishing all a lovely weekend.

Exactly Brett! That is one of the key points discussed and I am happy to read your confirmation as well. Thank you kindly! ;-)

I once had a project for a client using Absorb. They wanted 17 different languages,a total of about 2500 slides, all in one SCO. This is because of the way the LMS tracks the completion, it apparentlycouldn't be set up as separate SCOs.

We ended up adding a custom HTML language selection page at the top level of the main SCO and then used JavaScript within each Storyline file so we could publish each version separatelyand track properly to the LMS but all using different files. Made file management and productivity so much easier.

Big thanks to this forum and Steve Flowers for coming up with the solution.

Definitely break the module up, Storyline is good but probably not good enough to handle so many pages. Also think of the rendering and processor power needed to open let alone publish the file.  I've never seen this done but perhaps other community members have tried this but one thing to look at is whether you can link assets such as videos and images together between modules. If you want to change one image last thing you want to have to do is open and then publish 20 seperate files. To be honest there are other authoring tools that would get you past this issue.... hopefully Storyline 3 will tackle this common problem!

Thank you kindly, Nick and Richard! :-)