Building Multiple Language Versions in One Course?

Hi, Eric!

That would be one way.

You could also probably have the three versions of the course text (one for language) on the same slide. Depending on which language the learner choose, you'd only show one set of the text on the slide (through use of variables).  This might be unwieldy for some so separate paths might be easier.

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for the variable idea! Hadn't thought of it. At least it's another option and I'd have to learn more. I wanted to make sure that I did some research before I told the client that it is something that can be done!

I'll let you know what the end result is if they decide to have the courses built.

Thanks again,

Eric

We had a the same question arise.  We have one course that has to be delivered in 9 languages.  We ended up making the English course very interactive and then translated that same course into separate courses.  It would be nice to be able to choose the language in the beginning of the course and then have all of the text appear in that language throughout the course.  Any ideas as to how to make the "Choose your Language" button set all text for slides after it to that chosen language? The course would be too large to duplicate into 9 languages in one file.

So I am very interested in this topic and wish articulate had chimed in on this. This thread is pretty old. Did anyone work out a solution? I would love to see an example or get more information on how to use variables to allow for different text. 

I was also thinking it might be useful to just have it in english with different voiceovers. My goal is to deliver just in the US but to make it friendlier for those who struggle with english.

We've done some of these and have usually just set triggers at the beginning to choose your language which takes you to the scene in the proper language. It works pretty well and is simple enough to do though you could have some pretty large file sizes especially if you are using many images.

I've toyed around with Gary's idea using variables on an opening chose your language screen and then having the timeline read the variable for each slide to show the proper layer. That only seems to work if your structure is fairly simple, i.e. you don't have a lot of layers being triggered by buttons or other interactions.

Another way using variable is to create states for every text item/caption/title, etc., one state for each language on every slide. So you would have an English state for each item, a Spanish state, a Japanese state, etc. And then at the start of the timeline for each slide you'd have it read the language variable and then change the state of each text item to that state. Seems like a lot of work but could be done. I did it once to create a single, multi-language quiz and I think it worked out OK.

I built a demo at a conference once where I created a default shape that had states for each language. I added triggers to the shape to change state based on the language variable.

Then whenever I wanted to add something to the slide, I duplicated the shape. This copied the triggers. Then I added my content.

I could export the word doc and then add my localized content where needed. And everything was a lot easier. I didn't have to build a bunch of versions. I just had to add my translation to the pre-established states.

This takes some forethought, but once you have it built, it works well. I'll do a quick tutorial to show how it works.

Scale is a consideration. Smaller modules with few alternate languages might be perfectly manageable in a single Storyline file. In my experience, the easiest way to handle larger courses is to:

1) Build in a primary language. course-english.story

2) Use translation tools to build alternate packages. course-spanish.story, course-russian.story, course-german.story

3) Publish each course out to a separate SCORM module. Copy each module into a folder that clearly indicates the language.

4) Assemble them all into one SCO by creating a manifest (you could simply copy the manifest files from your primary publish) and pointing this manifest to launch an index.html file that links to a specific language. The LMS will launch this "Menu" and then the participant will receive a payload of the Storyline file in the selected language.

There are a couple of advantages to this. First, it's actually a little easier to manage. You're working and publishing X number of separate simpler files than one monster. Second, it's less wasteful in bandwidth. Since it only loads a single published output instead of all of the languages. Plus each language can have a localized interface. This is described a bit here:

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/localization-strategy-and-variables#reply-190324

Tom, I like the idea of setting all the triggers up on a single item and then duplicating it for each of the other languages. Think I'll play around with that and see if it improves the efficiency of the workflow.

Looking forward to seeing you demo.

Here's a quick demo hopefully it makes sense. The main point is that you create a starter object with a state for each language. That object has a trigger for each language to change to the appropriate state. 

When you duplicate the object, the triggers get duplicated, too. You can save this as a localized starter slide in your templates. 

http://artco-temp.s3.amazonaws.com/tom/localize_idea.mp4

Just thought I'd bump this back up as Tom's video demonstrates very well what I was trying to explain clumsily above.