Translations - non English character types - is there a difference

Sep 13, 2013

Is there any difference between doing translations in Storyline with English vs non-English character based languages? (like Mandarin or Arabic)  Or does it take the same amount of time as any other language?

Thanks very much!

Jordan

3 Replies
Bruce Graham

Hi Fraser,

Not quite sure what the answer above is saying, however, the main issues I have found with non-Western character translations is the amount of space required, and fonts.

Some fonts will not work with non-Western character sets, so you may need to have extra checking cycles in place. Also, with some languages there is a considerable expansion in the amount of characters required, so you will need to put an extra "re-design" phase into place.

Dennis mentions the pre-defined translations - to which I do not agree. In many cases I have had reviewers want these changed, to more accurately reflect the way that they would actually advise users to use the Player. My impression is that the pre-built Player translations are rather "technical" translations, and may not be always the best terms to use.

In answer to your question then - perhaps the best answer is that all translations require a huge amount of effort to get correct. I recently wrote a document on "best practice" for a client and it ended up at 12 pages!

Regards

Dennis Hall

Hi Fraser and Bruce:

Regarding "predefined translations" in the player, it becomes obvious you can change them when your in that area. If you require a major overhaul, you can export that language as XML and import the revised XML file as well. I do agree with Bruce that the current translations are not always suitable and appreciate that they can be changed.

Regarding the content area...

You can export to Word, your current verb-ages for everything in the content area of SL. You can then have that document translated and re-import it to SL. This all works and I use it often (in the 6 official UN languages) since it is the fastest method of translating the text, however, I also provide the SME with access to the course to provide feedback related to the images (cultural considerations). I also re-arrange the player (I created components for this) so the menu is always displayed on the right (ie. Arabic) and the notes on the left, or where ever the translator recommends them placed.

Bruce is correct about space considerations as many languages require more space to display the equivalent information. To accomplish this, I resize the project by language while keeping the font the same size in the content.

Hope this clarifies my statements.

Best Regards,

Dennis Hall

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