Forum Discussion

BrettRockwood-a's avatar
BrettRockwood-a
Community Member
2 days ago

Rise Single-Font Limitation for Localization

I might be missing something, but during localization testing in Rise, it seems you can only select one font for the entire course. If you change the font in the Theme of one language in the stack it changes it for all courses in the stack. This isn't a big issue for courses that only use standard Latin characters but does become a problem with Asian scripts.

Our usual font pairing uses Inter but Inter doesn’t support the character set for Japanese or Simplified Chinese. I’ve seen recommendations for Noto Sans, but that’s not a built-in option in Rise. And unless you use the CJK variant, it still won’t cover all characters. (And the CJK version isn’t a single font file—it’s multiple versions—so it would likely have the same issue.)

How are others dealing with this limitation? Any best practices for keeping the course readable and visually consistent across English, Japanese, and Chinese would be greatly appreciated!

advice
Articulate 360
localization
rise 360

1 Reply

  • StevenBenassi's avatar
    StevenBenassi
    Staff
    2 days ago

    Hi BrettRockwood-a​!

    Thank you for the feedback!

    What you've shared is correct, and the expected behavior for Rise courses translated with Articulate Localization. Font settings are shared across all language versions within a localization stack. That means authors cannot assign distinct fonts per language at the Theme-level right now.

    This behavior is in place to maintain layout consistency, but I do understand it can complicate the authoring process when certain languages are used (Latin, CJK, etc). I've shared your insights as a feature enhancement, with our product team!

    In the meantime, as a workaround, we suggest:

    • If possible, using a font that covers all target scripts.  Choose a 'Pan-Unicode' font such as Arial Unicode MS, Noto Sans Universal, or Google Sans Text that includes extended script coverage.
    • Create a separate Localization stack specifically for 'CJK' languages. Duplicate the Rise 360 course and localize the Japanese and Chinese versions in their own stack, with dedicated fonts applied to each. This will prevent automatic synchronization between versions, but allow proper font rendering and language-specific typography to be retained.

     

    I'll also open the floor to fellow localization users to share their design suggestions with you!