Translation Problem

May 19, 2014

Hi,

Today I tried to translate my course into Chinese. Just as a test but unfortunatly it doesn't worked the way I hoped.

I don't know how to solve this, so hopefully someone can tell me what is wrong. I just changed the text in the translation doc. 

Importing the translation doc was succesfully, and if I am in the slide editing mode I can see the Chinese text, but as soon as I preview the text which is Chinese turns into ''?''

I attached 2 pictures, first one is in editing mode (where you can see the font) and the second one is in preview mode.

8 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Rients,

First, you'll want to use a font that supports all Chinese characters, such as Arial Unicode MS or SimSun. I tested this out on my side just to see if I could see the Chinese in preview and editing (even though I don't have any special language installs) so I did a quick translation at Google, copied those characters into a text box and everything previewed fine. That leads me to believe it's something specific with your install and set up of Storyline. So first, can you check that you meet the system requirements here for Storyline.  Next, I'd also want to confirm that you're working with local project files, as working off a network or USB drive can cause unusual behavior.  Lastly, please follow the repair steps for Storyline. 

Please let us know how it behaves after checking into those elements. 

Rients Pieters

Hello Ashley,

Thank you for your reply. It was very helpfull since my font didn't support Chines characters(I used Verdana). I didn't know about this.

But it raised some more questions actually. I want to translate my course in about 21 different languases such as Malaysian and Indian.

So is there a font type that supports all this special characters?

And is there some kind of list of these fonts that support it, so I could choose (because I am going to change the font of my English course as well then.

Thank you again for the reply, it was really helpfull! 

Rients Pieters

Update: I found a list of unicode fonts. And also I understand the concept of unicode better now!

I guess if I use the Arial Unicode MS for the courses with special characters it will be fine right?

But I was wondering since I was testing translation, I saw that text that I centered in the original course moved to left when I imported the translation doc.

Is there a way to prevent this, because it would be great if the position is exactly the same ( the text box stays at the same place fortunately )

Greetings,

Rients

Jeff Kortenbosch

Hi Rients, now that you have proper fonts installed you shouldn't be getting any of those odd replacements.

Regarding the left to right positioning of text, this is something that happens when the font/language is a left to right kind of font. e.g. Arabic flips around and, for us westeners, is difficult to edit since the text box will behave flipped as well.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Rients,

Glad you were able to find a listing of unicode fonts - I'd say Arial Unicode is your best bet for consistency across all languages and your courses. Also, I'd agree with Jeff about the right to left languages - so those courses may need some additional formatting of the slides once you've imported the translation. 

Rients Pieters

Hey,

Thank you both for the replies. It is very helpfull. This problem is solved. But I came across another one. Should I make a new post or can I just ask it here. I'll just ask my question and if needed I will delete it.

I am trying to make some kind of menu, like an index! I did the following:

I created a menu scene. In every slide of the course there is a button (like a menu button). If you click it you will be redirected to the scene with the menu's(menu scene).

There are 5 slides in this scene (chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, and chapter 5). They are all the same exept that if you are in the menu ''chapter 2'' you can choose to click on chapter 1, and chapter 2, and you will be redirected to the beginning of that chapter.

So what I did is link the menu button on the chapter (for example: If you click the menu button when you are in chapter 4, you will enter a menu where you can choose to go to the first 4 chapters, but the 5th is grey, and not working.

This works fine, except that when someone want's to revisit (for example) chapter 2, and want's to continue later, skip chapter 3, because he/she already finished it.. It's not possible because when once in chapter 2 the menu only show's the first 2 chapters (other ones are grey now too).

It is a bit complicated story, but I am still pretty new to the whole e-learning thing and well. I hope you could also help me with this

Sorry for so much questions :$

Rients

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Rients,

Questions are what we're here for.

It sounds like you have a "menu" slide in each chapter or scene? If so - this all sounds like it's behaving as expected as the menu in each scene doesn't know that you've gone into the other scenes yet. Instead I'd suggest that you set up the menu as it's own scene that is linked to each individual one. You'll need to set up the triggers to change the states of the buttons based on which sections have already been visited and then depending on how those states are triggered you'll want to look into the slide revisiting behavior (for example, if trigger to when timeline starts it'll need to be set to reset to initial state or if triggered based on a click it can be set to resume saved state). 

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.