Translation in Rise

Apr 14, 2017

Hi All, 

I have a Rise course whitten in English that some of our users in non english spkeaking countries are struggling to understand. 

From what I understand there is no option to easlily translate your content into multiple languages in Rise.  I was looking for a work around and found that Google offers a plugin to automatically translate any webpage:  http://translate.google.com/manager/website/?hl=en

I understand the quality of the translation will not be great but it is a start. 

I tried to get it to work but they ask you to "Copy and paste the following code snippets onto every page you want to translate"  I tried to do this on the .index.html page but it did not work. 

Has anyone tried this and got it to work? 

thanks 

Nigel 

 

89 Replies
Rémi Cotrait

Hi Alyssa,

How late would you be on the schedule then? The translation feature was announced early last year for Q3 2017. I cannot believe there still remains features in progress before such an important and awaited one.

Between Articulate and the company behind our LMS, it's very difficult for our business to plan. IS guys kind of take us hostage there. Maybe you don't feel you owe your customers firm ETA's or that you will not be held accountable for your previous commitments but most people on this forum certainly do and we rely on you to meet our own deadlines.

Please confirm the feature will be implemented before the end of Q2 2018 and will not be delayed further. As a serious company, I assume you are able to announce your plans for the next two months.

Thanks!
Rémi

N R

To be fair to Articulate, they can't give a date until they know what they are developing is 100% ready. If they give a date and then they come across some problems that take longer to resolve, then they will be in trouble with all the customers who promised their clients translations based on the date Articulate gave.  I guess we have to either use manual translations or work around until the feature is launched. 

Regards

Nigel 

Content Developer

I agree with Nigel, we are all (kind of) professionals or small business owners here, and we all know that an ETA is by definition an estimate. Defining an ETA does not give you magic powers about incertainities, bugs and other not-foreseen hurdles. Or someone here is able to complete 100% of their projects without unexpected problems? Also me and my collagues wait for the release of this feature, we know it's going to save us a ton of time for large projects, but I prefer a properly tested feature than a rushed one that may come out full of bugs.

The world (and the software development world in particular) is an uncertain place no ETA is going to change that, make peace with it :)

Rémi Cotrait

I know an ETA is just an estimate and that unexpected obstacles can always arise. I'm perfectly fine with that.

Don't forget Nigel opened this thread more than a year ago and Ashley communicated shortly after a release target for Q3 2017. I can very well understand they need half a year more to deliver a bug-free feature. I would be less understanding if on July 2nd they come saying it is further delayed without real explanations.

The world as you say Dario is an uncertain place where jobs are easily put in jeopardy when one misses too many deadlines and we're unfortunately missing quite a few thanks to software development companies, which sometimes even blame each other to justify delays (our LMS company currently blames Articulate for Tin Can report issues!). It's very difficult to plan large-scale projects in these conditions and that's why I might sound excessively bitter. Apologies for that.

Good news is that Alyssa just said they cannot give a firm ETA, not that the feature won't be released in Q2 2018 so I can still plan on investing in Rise training module translations in S2.

Dan Fletcher

I agree that it's difficult to predict when a software feature will be ready, but Alyssa's comment seems to indicate that they haven't even started to work on it ("We’ve got a few other features that are currently in progress before this one, so I don't have a firm ETA to share at this time"). If that's the case, it seems highly unlikely that they'll be ready to LAUNCH this feature by the end of June. I was the person who started the previous thread in which we were promised this feature in 2017, so it's a bit of a sore point to me that at the end of April 2018 it sounds like they haven't even started. We also have several projects that are on hold waiting for this feature. I think promising a feature is going to be released in a specific quarter (which they have done twice now) and then not meeting that deadline and not fessing up to it until the community starts to ask has a "bait and switch" feel to it.

I love Rise and will continue to develop in it, but it's hard not to interpret these issues as the company being somewhat dishonest. If a deadline slips, the community you've promised the feature to deserves a head's up as soon as you know you're not going to make your own self imposed deadline. That didn't happen for the 2017 deadline, so it makes me worried that the same is about to happen here. Hopefully not, and hopefully they will meet the Q2 2018 deadline as planned, but the fact that I posted the question only a few minutes after Alyssa posted her comment and there is still no reply from Articulate is a worrying sign...

Dan

Cass Netzley

Similar sentiments on software and feature release ETA's, as the company I work for, is in the telecom software realm. We have products in both the traditional 'premise' and cloud-based spaces (AWS). It's a fickle matter and really, only when a customer is of a certain size (contract $$$ wise) are feature releases on an imperative schedule tied to a milestone needing to met/deadline kept. Thorough testing is a key component w such a wide array of web browsers, current code implemented into projects and setups by end users-- the variables are many and it's easy to mess up current working features when putting in new code and making any assumptions. 

My team of 15 devs and 10 designers are chomping at the bit to fully utilize Rise and convert some of our heaviest projects over to it. Courses that can span 2 weeks of time and have 450-500 page counts inside of their current PDF format. We have stuff in WordPress, Elucidat, InDesign, InCopy-- whatever it takes to get the job done and expectations of scoping met. With a global audience spanning EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and NA -- Translations and the costs of out-sourcing or keeping it in-house is always a big issue. We're clamoring for this feature as well, but Rise to PDF (allowing local notations by instructors and learners AS well as printing) is another big feature promised for Q2 by one of the lead dev's in another high visibility thread. Same goes for course search. These features are considered imperative before Rise can be truly adopted for all of our content moving forward. Lot's of big-ticket features on the plate of Articulate devs, testers, and the team as a whole. 

Just know that you're not alone hoping that the next day you check your email, you see a notification from these forums about a new feature shipping that you've been waiting for anxiously. With that said, I'm still happy the Rise team has this product offering as I've seen the potential already for an easy to learn/use tool for rapid course design w/ responsive output. It's fathoms better in that essence than say Elucidat, LearnDash, or even some authoring tools inside of the cutting edge LMS options.

Matt Bradshaw

We have 3 courses that have been developed.   All text has now been extracted manually into docx and files have been sent off to agency for translation into EFIGS and Japanese.

When we get them back we start the slow and manual process of copying each course per language and manually adding the translated text back in before then starting the review process again.

Unfortunately all of the benefits in using Rise for course development are overshadowed by the lack of translation feature when translation is required.

With what appears to be a further delay in the availability of a translation feature our training dev team have now been instructed to not use Rise for any further course development.

Matt Garton

I bought all my employees 5 button mice so they have select-all, copy, paste on mouse buttons to reduce stress on the keyboard hand...

But as much as some of our clients like Rise, I've been advising them not to do any development in it, for any content they need in more than 2 languages...the labor just makes it to costly. Granted if they are willing to pay, we'll always do it...but it's an inefficient use of time and money.

Content Developer

Don't get me wrong Remi, I understand your perplexity (that is also the mine, by the way) and if I could point something about Articulate is a less-than-perfect communication. They could say "this feature is postponed indefinitely" of "we have encountered issues during the implementation", expecially since this is a very dedicated community (that has, by the way, contributed a lot to the success of the product) that deserves to be informed about stuff like that.

Given that, this is not a crucial bug fix (and there are lots of old important bugs in SL that are waiting a fix - everybody working with the software knows that), but a feature implementation. Rise remains usable as it is. The software house has no obligation to implement the feature in a given time, it has given an ETA but it is free to switch priorities (also because not all users have the same interest in a feature). It is their call, right or wrong. Nobody here has signed a contract that states "this feature will be implemented at this given date".

So, what I wanted to point out is my possibly super-flawed opinion on this matter: we should not base our, particularly if at risk of putting jobs at jeopardy, budgeting or technical decisions (or give promises to our customers) on something that is not yet tested and implemented. In particular if this is something that is out of our control.

 

Sarah Stillings

Looking forward to the course translation feature!

I know the feature isn't live yet, but is there any information available summarizing the feature's planned capabilities or the experience the course author will have when using the feature? Trying to get a sense of what will be required of the course author once this goes live. 

Thanks!

Matt Bradshaw

Thought I'd share an issue we run into during manual translation.

The courses we have manually translated have quizzes within them.  The 'Matching' type question has a character limit within the possible answers.

This creates translation issues as many languages are a lot more wordy than English (Spanish, German etc.)  In these cases the translated text cannot be used as it exceeds the character limit.

Hopefully the translation feature will highlight where there are overflow issues, or these character limits on interactions will be removed.

Dominik Ginthier

I've come across the same difficulties, especially with regards to the labels. I posted a feature request a couple of month ago, asking if it is possible to change the character limit (for the labels it is currently 22 if I am not mistaken). 

Additionally I hope Articulate will also implement right-to-left support at the same time. Fingers crossed. 

craig Sumner

Hi all

I have been playing about with the new PDF export function as a way to grab all the text for translations, if you have a copy of Adobe PDF Pro you can export the PDF to Microsoft Excell once its exported from Rise.

You have to do a little bit of a tidy up in the excell file, turn on word wrap etc, but it gives you a good starting point.

Rémi Cotrait

HI Craig, this is a nice way to extract text strings but all the tags are gone which means you have to paste your translate text manually and redo all the formatting. 

The huge advantage of an import/export content to translate/localize feature in Rise when it is released (hopefully before end of Q2 2018) is that since digital lessons are responsive there will be absolutely no need to check all text strings fit in their area like in Storyline. Your module will be ready to be published without further edit provided of course your translator didn't break any tags.

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