Articulate Storyline: Multi-language, best practice?

Nov 04, 2016

Hi guys,

So, I've been looking at ways to support more than one language in my courses, and I've seen many different approaches. But none that actually do what I want :)

At the beginning of a course, the user selects a language. Based on this selection, I want to provide text, video and audio(voiceover) in the selected language, without also loading all content for the other languages!

My first test was this:
-Define a variable "Language"
-First slide forces user to select language. Store this selection in variable.
-Text elements on following slides have one state for each language. Event changes state to match selected language.
-Audio is added for each language, but only selected language is started.

This seemed to work perfectly, except that all audio tracks are preloaded, and all videos are also loaded.

What I need, is a way to load only the content needed for that language.

I tried making one scene for each language, but all scenes are loaded. So I need you guys to point me in the right direction! :D

Any help is much appreciated!

3 Replies
Joanne Chen

Hi Stian, I have a course with four languages in hand. I think the way I am doing just meet what you need. Here is how I did it.

  1. Publish each language cousre as a file. (So there will be four files for me)
  2. Create another file (I called it 'Main'). At the beginning of the file, user selects a language. Based on this selection,  it will lead the user to the related slide/scene.
  3. Insert each language version file as an Web Object in the related slide/scene.

In this way, you will have only one language course loaded since they are web objects to the main file. Hope this helps.

Stian Larsen

Thanks a lot for your reply :)

This could work, but I'm not sure it would be the best way because all assets used would have to be duplicated 6 times (for now, maybe more languages coming). Which means the course would be very big to upload and maintain.

I got an email saying Articulate have something big coming up. I'm hoping for a new version, and better support of multiple languages in one course :) But if no such support is included, I might have to use the example you posted.

In your example, if I am to update a slide, I would have to locate all 6 projects (1 for each language), open each, do the edit, save, publish for web), then find the main course, open, change all web-object to point to the newly created exports (and because of the AS bug, I can't simply overwrite old webobject, as it will not grab a new copy unless you update the path to the webobject?). Save this, and then finally export this for LMS, and upload that to the LMS.

Would tracking even work? For included webobject? :)

Lewis Brennan

If you already have the module set up with states for each of the text areas, could you put the 4 versions of the sound/video files on different layers and use the same triggers to push 'on timeline start show layer 'French' if '%Language Choice%' = French? You would still need 4 versions of the video and audio, but at least it remains in one module and easier to track?

If it is space you are concerned about, maybe you could compromise and have the video and audio files as web objects rather than whole courses? That way you would only be loading video/audio you needed as you loaded the page. Of course it would mean you needed to host all the video and audio externally.

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