Forum Discussion
Articulate Localization - Shrink Text on Overflow Bug
StevenBenassi can we receive a formal reply on this issue, as we currently are unable to use Localization because the text does not shrink (or grow) for various languages other than the 'base' language.
Hi, everyone!
I'm happy to jump in here. The affected text boxes are likely set to autofit based on the source language text. If the corresponding text in a translation is longer, scrollbars will appear to prevent text from overlapping or being cut off, ensuring that all content remains accessible. If you want to remove the scrollbars, please make sure the text box is set in the source language to "Do not autofit" or "Fixed size," then manually adjust the shape.
I understand manually adjusting these can be time consuming and we truly appreciate your honest feedback. I've shared your comments with our product team!
Hi Kelly, thanks for joining the topic.
I see my trial ended and I can't use the Localization tool anymore. So I created a new account to use the trial again, but unfortunately that doesn't work so I can't record proof for you.
I can assure you that the texboxes were not set to 'Autofit' as you can see on the first screenshot. The setting was set to "shrink text on overflow". This functionality prevents the scrollbars from appearing in the first place.
To reiterate; the text in the source language shrinks when you add more characters then what fits in the text box. The subsequent translations based on the source language do not shrink on overflow. As you can see in the first and second screenshot, the option "Shrink text on overflow" is selected, but the Ukrainian text does not shrink and scrollbars appear out of nowhere.
The reason we want to use "Shrink text on overflow" is because we don't want to adjust every textbox manually (if we have to do that, there is no time advantage anymore).
Hope to hear from you soon.
Regards, Kaj
p.s. can you also ask why my question (sent via question form) about pricing on Localization hasn't been answered yet?
Hi KajDekkers!
Thanks for following up!
Our development team is consistently looking for ways to improve Storyline's handling of text formatting, when translating into different languages. I've ensured that all of your feedback has been shared with them.
In your original post you touched on Storyline's Upgrade Project Text feature. While I understand this feature does not support the 'Shrink Text on Overflow' setting, it does provide the author with an Autofit option to expand the height of text boxes.
Using a copy of your .story file, I suggest exploring this enhancement to see if fewer manual adjustments are required when translating from English to Ukrainian.
However, at the moment, it is the expected behavior that scrollbars will still appear, and some manual adjustment will be required, when translating into certain languages. If you're comfortable sharing a copy of the .story file that's giving you trouble, we'd be happy to take a closer look and offer insight. Feel free to upload that here in the discussion or privately through a support case.
Also, I'm sorry to hear you were having trouble connecting with a Sales agent on Articulate Localization pricing. Not to worry! I've opened a support case on your behalf, and escalated it to our Sales team, so they can work with you directly on any pricing questions you may have.
Hi StevenBenassi / KellyAuner ,
The Autofit option, whilst it sounds great on paper, is not ideal in many cases because some languages need up to 30% more characters for the same amount of English text (e.g., Hungarian, Bulgarian, Ukranian). Whereas Japanese needs like 30% of the amount of space of an English text.
So, in a Localized Project (that contains multiple languages) the largest language (in other words, the language that requires the most amount of characters) determines how large the textbox will be. This does not work because some languages are so wordy that the text boxes become ridiculously large for languages that require far less characters (e.g. English, French).
Therefore, I heavy rely on 'Shrink Text on Overflow'. because languages like Bulgarian shrink 0.5 or 1.0 and then fit in the box, instead of creating overly large boxes.
In other words, in order to make Localization a feature I can use with my team we need to be able to 'shrink text on overflow', if we cannot do this we will not be able to save time and traditional methods will remain more efficient.
In short: We cannot deliver projects with extremely large text boxes because some languages use a lot more characters (simply take a look at the screenshots from KajDekkers again and you can immediately see how much space the Ukrainian text takes up). So, we need the text to adjust to the box, not the box to adjust to the text. It doesn't matter if the text is 0.5 or 1.5 smaller, people can still read it just fine.
Please discuss this with your team and I would be happy to use Localization with my team for all our projects.
Best regards.
