Creating course with support for 5 languages
Nov 06, 2017
Hi all,
I'm on the verge of a huge project involving product training evolving around 5 different languages (English, German, Spanish, Portugese, French - all spoken audio). I'm looking for best practise in this regard.
Here's what I plan to do:
One opening slide where the user chooses his/her preferred language (variable)
Suggestion A: A layer corresponding to the chosen layer opens up on each slide, and audio for the chosen language is placed here (synchronized with the master timeline).
Suggestion B: The audio for the chosen language is placed on the base layer of each slide. Audio is cut up into small pieces, so whenever an animation is played or a picture appears, you automatically progress to a new slide. This eliminates any syncing problems.
"Prev" & "Next" buttons appear in English. Possibly hide these on all slides and create custom ones with state based on chosen language.
Possibly hide menu and create a custom one which opens in lightbox - state changes based on chosen language.
Any thoughts or pointers? AM I heading ion the right direction or will this end up a total mess?
Best regards
Michael
2 Replies
Hi Michael.
This sounds like an epic project. I'm not sure about best practice but option B sounds like the most workable option to me, I always try to split audio to make it more manageable and eliminate syncing issues.
If I was doing this I would put all graphics and animations on the base layer with the individual language layers containing text over this. This would keep the final file size to a minimum.
I'd then add a extra layer above all others with hot spots to trigger any interactions, this way you would only need to create 1 set of triggers per slide rather than one set of triggers per layer. This would make custom Prev and Next buttons easy to create as you would only have the one trigger per hot spot rather than 1 per language. You could also use left and right arrows to indicate Next and Previous to save creating the different language buttons, but this depends on how savvy your end user is.
A Custom menu sounds like the only way to go for multiple languages and a light box would look cool.
Good luck with this project.
Marc
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your input! My manager has hit the brakes. We're gonna create 5 different courses instead - but comments and ideas were appreciated (and actually tested out before she hit the brakes).
BR
Michael
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