Building Your Localization Workflow

Establishing an efficient, repeatable workflow for e-learning localization saves time, reduces errors, and ensures consistent quality across language versions. With Articulate 360, you have powerful tools at your disposal to streamline the localization process—but you still need a clear workflow to make the most of these features. By mapping out each step from content preparation to final review, you'll create a systematic approach that your team can follow for every localization project, making the process more predictable and manageable.

Key Elements of an Effective Articulate 360 Localization Workflow

• Define workflow stages and ownership: Map out each step in your localization process, from content preparation to final publishing. Typical stages include content audit, file preparation, translation, review, multimedia adaptation, quality assurance, and publishing. For each stage, identify who is responsible, what their specific tasks are, and how they'll know when their part is complete. With Articulate 360, different team members can focus on different aspects—content creators, translators, reviewers, and publishers.
• Leverage Articulate's translation features: Translate your course content into 70+ languages and manage all the language versions as a single project with integrated AI translation in Rise or Storyline.
• Establish review touchpoints: Build quality checks into your workflow at key moments—after initial content creation, post-translation, and before final publishing. Use Articulate Review to speed up the process of human validation for AI translations. Publish your multi-language course to Review 360 and assign validators to review the AI translation and keep track of their progress.
• Create realistic timelines: Develop timeline templates that account for each workflow step and include buffer time for unexpected challenges. Consider that different languages may require different amounts of time—complex character sets, right-to-left languages, or languages with significant text expansion may need extra review cycles. Estimate how long each stage should take based on course length and complexity.
• Document testing procedures: Include thorough testing as a formal stage in your workflow. Create checklists for testers to verify text display, multimedia functionality, interactive elements, and navigation in each language version. Plan for testing across different devices and screen sizes to ensure your localized Articulate courses work properly for all learners regardless of how they access the content.

Next Steps

1. Map your current process: Document how you currently localize content in Articulate 360, identifying pain points and bottlenecks.
2. Create workflow diagrams: Develop visual representations of your ideal localization workflow to share with team members.
3. Build stage-specific checklists: Create detailed task lists for each stage of the workflow to ensure consistency.
4. Conduct a trial run: Test your new workflow on a small project before implementing it across all localization efforts.
5. Schedule a workflow review: Plan to evaluate and refine your process after completing a few projects, incorporating lessons learned.

Summary

A well-defined localization workflow is essential for efficiently creating multilingual e-learning in Articulate 360. By clearly defining stages and ownership, leveraging built-in translation features, establishing review touchpoints, creating realistic timelines, and documenting testing procedures, you'll develop a repeatable process that produces high-quality localized courses. This systematic approach reduces the cognitive load on your team by providing clear guidelines at each step, allowing them to focus on creating engaging, culturally appropriate content rather than figuring out what comes next. With a solid workflow in place, your Articulate 360 localization projects will become more predictable, efficient, and successful.