Forum Discussion
Q&A: Nova — AI, & Credits
Our organisation does not have the new Articulate interface yet and I am curious about translation cost. I know it is 2 credits per character but how can we tell how many characters our course is in the old interface? I spent a lot of time pricing out what our courses would cost for multi-language translations this year to present a business case to management for translation. Now it seems like none of those numbers will be accurate. Is there a quick way in the old interface to determine how much a course would cost per language? Is there a word count or other easy feature so I can quickly redetermine what the costs would be for translation now?
Thanks for laying out the real-world impact here, AngeliqueHB, I can see why this matters for the business case you're building.
I want to be upfront. There isn't a reliable way to estimate characters or cost before translating a course today. That's a known gap on our end, not something you're missing.
Two workarounds exist, though both only give you a rough floor, not an accurate number. You can export a Storyline course to Word and use Word's character count, or export the XLIFF file from a Rise course. Either way, I'd treat whatever number comes out as a baseline rather than something to build a firm budget around. The real character count tends to run higher, since formatting like bold text adds characters that a plain word count won't capture.
Thank you for the information. I will say that we will most likely not be able to continue with localization with the new model. In doing a base estimate, one translation will now cost us $1,000 vs the $250 we were paying and that is only for one year. We often translate into 7 languages, and this will be a higher cost for us than just using a translation company. Especially because you are charged every year you make any changes, no matter how minimal. It is unfortunate that this software will not be able to be utilized due to these prices/inability to provide an accurate estimate of the cost so organizations can submit a budget proposal.
That makes me sad as well. The increased cost of all translation services will make any future translations very difficult to budget for. Emily-if you find any other solutions closer to the price of what it used to cost, please let me know and I will do the same. Thanks!
EricSantos Why would formatting, like bold text, add to the character count? It doesn't increase the characters to format them. If this is true, can you provide detailed guidance on how formatting impacts character counts?
Hi BridgettHorn,
That’s a fair question. You’re right that making text bold doesn’t add visible characters. The translation character count also includes the formatting instructions stored behind the text, so applying bold or other styles can increase the billable count even though the words themselves haven’t changed.
I understand why you’d want a detailed explanation of how those formatting choices affect the total. I don’t have a verified breakdown by formatting type to share, and I don’t want to give you an inaccurate figure for how many characters a particular style adds.
Your point about the difference between visible characters and billable characters is helpful context for making our guidance clearer.
Only, when you have chosen the AI localization, the other export options are no longer there...
+ The AI localization translates anything and everything, including every slide title and variable. These are things I sometimes don't need to have localized. (for example in a project with no menu in the player, or when screenscraping, a slide can be just a mouse movement...)
So when translating a course, Ideally I need to be able to have a cost for what the translation will be, to see if that cost can be motivated versus the purpose of that training...
Hi JurgenLepla,
Thanks for following up, and for flagging that the export options disappear once a course is localized. You’re right, and I should have been clearer about when the Word export works.
The Word export gives a rough baseline only on a regular Storyline file, so it has to be done before any languages are added, for example on a copy of your source course. Once a course has been translated with Articulate Localization, the export options aren’t available.
It sounds like you’d want to be able to leave out content you don’t need translated and see the cost up front, so you can decide whether a translation is worth it for the training. At the moment, on-slide text, slide notes and text variable values are all translated automatically, and there isn’t a way to leave items out. There also isn’t a way to see the cost before translating, and I don’t have a timeline to share. We’re continuing to track the need for a cost estimate.
Which slide elements do you most often need left untranslated, such as titles, variables or notes?
