I'm about to begin work on a project for an academic foreign languages department. The project will have English and Arabic text. I'm worried about mixing text that needs to be read in two different directions. Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm not sure if I should enable right-to-left, or turn it off. Will I have to bring my English text in as graphics? (Ouch.)
I would strongly recommend asking the client what their preference is for this. Having done localization for e-learning before, In a normal situation I would say the expectation is that it is OK to have text going in both directions, because the assumption is that the learner has a basic understanding of both English & Arabic.
However, because this is a university's Arabic department I would check in with them. They may change the format of the text to ease learners into the process, especially with a side-by-side comparison.
However if it is primarily Arabic with some English words inserted, I think you are fine to assume it will be read from right to left.
Thank you! I'm more concerned with the technical aspects -- if I set Storyline for right to left, will that affect my English text, too? Some text boxes will be in English, but others will be in Arabic, so I need the text to go in both directions, but I'm not sure Storyline can handle this.
Correct, the player can only be one text or one direction. As for the text on the slide, I can't test it as I don't have a RTL keyboard - but I'd suspect that you may be able to set each text box individually. I'd suggest that you do a quick double check to confirm.
4 Replies
Hi Sharon -
I would strongly recommend asking the client what their preference is for this. Having done localization for e-learning before, In a normal situation I would say the expectation is that it is OK to have text going in both directions, because the assumption is that the learner has a basic understanding of both English & Arabic.
However, because this is a university's Arabic department I would check in with them. They may change the format of the text to ease learners into the process, especially with a side-by-side comparison.
However if it is primarily Arabic with some English words inserted, I think you are fine to assume it will be read from right to left.
Thank you! I'm more concerned with the technical aspects -- if I set Storyline for right to left, will that affect my English text, too? Some text boxes will be in English, but others will be in Arabic, so I need the text to go in both directions, but I'm not sure Storyline can handle this.
Oh I see what you're saying - Sorry about that!
As far as I know, you can't configure the player to support both Right to left and left to right.
As a painful workaround, I agree, you can include your English text as a .png.
I would be interested to hear if anyone has a more technical answer, would make my life much easier as well :)
Hi Sharon,
Correct, the player can only be one text or one direction. As for the text on the slide, I can't test it as I don't have a RTL keyboard - but I'd suspect that you may be able to set each text box individually. I'd suggest that you do a quick double check to confirm.
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