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Articulate Localization: Create Multi-Language Storyline 360 Projects

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With Articulate Localization, you can translate your Storyline 360 content into more than 70 languages—and manage all language versions as a single file. Read on to learn more and get tips and best practices.

Translate a Course

Here's how to get started:

  1. Open an existing .story file that you’re ready to translate.
  2. Go to File > Localization and choose Translate Course.
  3. A translation dialog will appear. You can confirm the source language, select one or more target languages, and adjust the formality if the languages support that option.
  4. Click Translate. Storyline 360 will translate your course and add all your selected languages to the project.

Once you've added languages to a Storyline 360 project, all languages are stored in the same project file. You can easily switch between them during authoring, as shown below. Note that:

  • Multi-language files share everything except the text itself. If you edit a slide in one language, your edit will apply to all the other languages in your course.
  • You can anticipate layout issues by thinking about how to align, wrap, and size your text boxes as you’re designing the course. Leaving a little extra space for your content means that if the same content is a little longer in a target language, your layout can flex to accommodate it.
  • You can preview target languages by first switching to them in the language dropdown. Storyline will always generate a preview for the current language.

Manage Languages

You can add or remove languages from a multi-language project at any time or save an individual language as a separate Storyline project file. Find these options under File > Localization, as shown in the image below. Each number on the picture refers to additional information available in the table below the image.

 

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Description

1

Add or Replace a Language

To add a language, re-run the translation tool by choosing Translate Course. To replace or retranslate a language, re-run the translation tool for that language.

2

Delete a Language

To delete a language, hover the mouse over the language you want to delete and choose Delete from Project.

3

Save a Language Separately

To save an individual language as a separate project file, hover the mouse over the language you want to export and choose Save Translation As. This is useful in the following scenarios:

  • You want to create an entirely different course layout for a subset of your languages (e.g., RTL languages).
  • You want to open your project in the retail version of Storyline.
  • You need to share a localized file with a Storyline user who does not have Articulate Localization enabled.
  • You need to back up your project and want a separate backup project file for each language.
  • You want to author and review text in a single file, but each language has its own media.

 

Tips and Best Practices

The following tips and best practices can enhance your experience using Articulate Localization to create multi-language projects in Storyline 360.

Use the language variable to create per-language content

You can create custom, language-specific content with a new language variable built into Storyline 360. For example, you might want to show some text only to a specific audience or swap out an image or video to one more appropriate for a different language or culture.

To use this variable, add a condition to a normal trigger to make it apply only to a subset of the languages in the project. For example, you could choose to show a different state or layer or navigate to a different slide when the language is French (Canada).

 

Find and fix layout issues

Articulate Localization has a Layout Issue Finder for Storyline 360. Available under File > Localization, the tool when open shows a list of layout issues introduced during translation. Common issues include text overflowing the bounds of a shape or adding extra lines for the translated version.

Each issue is listed, along with every affected target language. Here’s how it works:

  • You can double-click a line to jump directly to the relevant issue in your project.
  • Issues can typically be fixed by resizing text boxes or by adjusting the text size in specific target languages.
  • When you fix an issue, it will be automatically removed from the list for all resolved target languages. You don’t need to manually verify that your fix worked everywhere.

Note: Translating an old project? Make sure you’re using modern text rendering to take advantage of the layout issue finder. Here’s how to upgrade your project when needed.

 

Localize video and audio assets with closed captions

Multi-language Storyline 360 projects share everything except the text. That means audio and video assets, including text-to-speech content, will be the same across all languages. You can localize these assets by adding closed captions to all video and audio assets. Since closed captions are text, they will be translated when you add languages to your course.

When  using closed captions for localization, you can employ these best practices:

  • Edit the translated closed captions and switch between languages as you edit.
  • Include the closed captions when validators review the course so their suggestions can be imported like any other text.
  • Automatically generate video transcripts from the closed captions to make videos more accessible.

 

Double-check localized text variables

To fully localize courses and ensure text variables work across languages, Storyline translates the values of text variables. This includes the text variable's default value, the values set using adjust-variable triggers, and the text values used in trigger conditions. Ensure the translated values for these variables are appropriate for your trigger. The image below shows how the same trigger is translated in different language versions.

 

 

Updated 8 days ago
Version 4.0