New in Storyline 360: Enhanced Word Translation
Feb 23, 2021
Translating courses with Storyline 360 has always been easy. In just a few clicks you can export all the text in your project for translation. And now you’re able to take advantage of changes we’ve made to Storyline’s Microsoft Word translation export. These enhancements make translating your courses easier than ever. Here’s a quick look at the changes:
- Easier access to key information: Now you’re able to view important details about your project—number of scenes, slides, slide layers, strings (text objects), words, and characters—in an easy-to-read table.
- More context clues: You’re also able to choose to include a screenshot of each slide before the slide’s associated text to give translators more context about where the text will appear.
- Improved formatting preservation: Text formatting is now preserved when you use the Word export feature for translation—even when you use things like lists and paragraph spacing. This saves you time and effort after the translated text is imported.
- Compatible with Word, Google Docs, and Open Office: In addition to using Microsoft Word to translate your courses, you can now use Google Docs and Open Office, giving you even more flexibility with your translation process.
With these helpful enhancements to the Word translation feature in Storyline 360, translating courses is faster and easier than ever. We hope you’re as excited about this new productivity boost as we are. If you don’t have an Articulate 360 subscription, sign up for a free 60-day trial to give it a whirl.
For more details about enhanced Word translation in Storyline 360, take a look at these helpful resources:
And to keep tabs on Storyline 360 features in the works, check out our What’s New, What’s Next page.
32 Replies
Hi Aukalen,
Thanks for checking in! I don't have an update since the latest release, but I'll share your comments with the team and post our progress here. If you need any assistance in the meantime, please let me know or submit a case for our Support Engineers.
After countless errors in translation due to segmentation, we had to go back to legacy mode.
Please share with the team that the bulk of translations are done by translations companies that use a translation software. When word files generated with the current engine are uploaded, high level of segmentation makes accurate translation almost impossible.
Segmentation not only makes translation difficult but also renders the use of 'translation memory' useless.
I imagine that in the eLearning space, tools like this one for translation, are part of the basic/essential tools. I can't understand how 3 years is an acceptable timeframe to have issues like this opened, while still adding new, 'not so important' or non-basic features to the software.
This is a recurring issue for Articulate products.
I think that a more transparent and visible way of voting (and seeing current votes) for features would be very welcomed by the community.
I would like to add my voice here to. I totally agree with Aukalen and the others as well. The "new" Word format looks great and it much faster to export, but also our translation agency is not able to translate it without us having to pay extra for the additional effort. We also went back to the legacy format until this has been addressed and fixed.
Many here would appreciate, if this is made a higher priority.
Hi Aukalen and Dominik,
So sorry for the trouble with Word translation! The issue with Word translation export segmentation should have been fixed in Storyline 360, Update 53. Would you be willing to share a copy of your Storyline file privately through a support case so we can find out what's happening and provide additional fixes as needed? We'll delete it when we're done testing!
In the meantime, can you try using XLIFF for translation instead of Word? Our old version of XLIFF was outdated, but we've already updated our XLIFF support. Let us know if this works for you!
Hello Eric,
While I appreciate your response, I can see that you're not up to date with what the issues are.
The problem is that the new export engine exports text segmented and when it's imported in a translation software it appears all broken up.
Translators need to see whole paragraphs to translate correctly, so instead of seeing something like this sentence:
they see things like this for example:
Each line in a different cell, meaning that it will show each line as a different paragraph when imported in the translation software.
To see the issue, you just have to take any storyline file and export it with the old engine and the new engine and compare the results to understand see the segmentation.
Then, understanding why segmentation is bad for translation, is a different matter. You have to work with translators to understand the issue fully, which I hope Articulate would have done when creating a feature that would be used by them.
Besides breaking paragraphs rendering them untranslatable, segmentation, creates another issue for translators. These translation softwares have memory, so they can reuse old translations that have been previously approved so, if they have the following translation for the phrase saved for example:
And in the new export it comes as two cells:
you will see that "Word translation" has been broken appart so it won't be recognised by the memory.
The fixes you are referring to that Articulate made in the past, took 90% segmentation, to 70% segmentation, which really did nothing to solve the problem for translators.
To solve the problem, paragraphs need to be exported complete (in one cell) as they are in the storyline file, regardless of they having words in different colours, bold, italics, etc.
I hope this clarifies the request.
Hi Eric,
Thank you for your reply and also thank you to Aukalen for the very detailed and well explained response. That is exactly what your translation agency is struggling with as well, hence we are still using the legacy translation option. In our case XLIFF files are not an option, we tried it, but it leads to higher translation costs as well.
Thank you.
Best,
Dominik
Dear Articulate team.
I have been following this discussion after my initial post in March 2021, which is almost two years ago.
Special thanks to Aukalen M for the excellent explanation (posted on 12/27/22). And thanks to all who keep this disussion alive.
As a company specializing in e-learning translation we are confronted with translation issues in our daily business.
It is real pitty that Articulate published an advanced export feature two years ago, but is obviously not listening to its users saying that it is UNUSABLE in its current state.
The result is that everyone who needs to translate Arculate Storyline courses in a professional way still has to rely on the LEGACY translation option. What's the use of a "new" export feature that nobody can use? From my perspective it is not enough to publish new features that look nice but are not usable.
In the case of the Export feature, I assume that 90% of the work is already done with the current version, so there is no need to re-develop the feature from scratch.
Articulate Storyline is a great tool - no doubt. But not listening to user feedback for almost two years as shows this discussion is not state-of-art.
As far as Articulate Storyline is concerned, my wish for 2023 that you Articulate will publish an amended Export format by end of March 2023. If you decide to look into this, we will be happy to assist with advice and feedback.
Regards,
Stefan