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Articulate Localization: Create Multi-Language Rise 360 Courses

With Articulate Localization,  you can translate course and microlearning content into 70+ languages and manage all the language versions as a single project, right from the Rise 360 dashboard. Watch the video to learn how to translate and share the translations with validators. Then read on for more details on managing multi-language courses.

 

Translate a Course

Before translating your course, run through this checklist to avoid common issues.

  • Prepare your course for AI translation with the following best practices:
    • Avoid using all caps to emphasize certain words. AI translation often interprets this as an acronym and won’t translate it.
    • Avoid splitting a sentence into multiple text boxes, as this removes necessary context for effective translation.
    • Avoid using emojis. Their meanings can vary across cultures, and machine translation tools may not interpret them accurately.
    • Use proper grammar.
  • Simplify formatting. Complex formatting can create challenges for all forms of AI translation. Here are some best practices:
    • Don’t format spaces.
    • Let Rise 360 handle text wrapping. Using shift+enter to manually insert line breaks will impact other languages, where it won’t always be appropriate.
  • Scan through your content one more time for terms that might need to be added to the AI translation glossary. The glossary specifies how terms are translated—or not translated. For example, you might have a specific term for “service” in a particular language. Or you may want to make sure your brand name does not get translated. 

Once you’ve double-checked your course, follow these steps to get started with Localization:

  1. In your dashboard, hover over the content tile for the course you want to localize, click the more (...) icon, and select Translate.
  2. 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.
  3. Click Translate. Rise 360 will create a multi-language course with all the language versions presented as a single course “stack”. The course stack tile on the dashboard indicates how many languages are in the stack, as shown below.

 

Translating a course creates a course stack

Multi-language courses share the same theme and structure. If you add, move, or delete a block, lesson, or section in one language, those changes will apply to all other languages in the course. Other factors to note:

  • Clicking the tile opens an overview page that lists all the current languages in a sidebar and allows you to preview each language.
  • Click EDIT COURSE to make changes to any language version.
    • The language dropdown on the top left lets you switch between languages while authoring, as shown below.

      Here are some guidelines to keep in mind when choosing a language from the dropdown:

      • Stay in the source language if you want to make changes in all languages, such as updating course content, adding new blocks, lessons, or sections, and changing themes.
      • Switch to a target language if you want to make language-specific changes, such as replacing media assets, editing existing text, and changing course labels.
  • Custom label sets are not translated, but translated courses will automatically have default label sets for each target language. If you prefer to use custom label sets,  you can assign them to individual language versions after translation.
  • Audio and video assets will be the same across all languages after translation. Any changes you make to the media—such as alt text or image alignment—in the source language will be applied to all target languages. You can have language-specific media by modifying the media asset in the target language. Remember that editing a target language disconnects the asset from the source language, so any changes done to the source won’t be applied moving forward.

Early-Access Course Stacks

Multi-language courses created during our early-access program will have an [Early Access] tag on the course tile and course stack. This older version has the following differences:

  • When you add languages to a Rise course, each translated language becomes a separate copy of the original course, so changes you make to one language version will not affect other languages.
  • To edit an individual language, switch to it in the sidebar and click the Edit button in the top navigation bar. Any changes you make affect only the language you are currently editing.
  • There’s no option to translate updates to the source language and publish a single-package, multi-language output.

Learn more about the early-access version of multi-language Rise 360 courses. Refer to this user guide when working on this version.

Translate Text Updates

Rise 360 detects text changes made to your source language after the last translation run. It allows you to translate these changes without affecting other portions of the course. If the unchanged portions have imported validation suggestions, these will be preserved. Here's how it works. 

  1. Update existing text or add blocks to your source language.
  2. A blue notification dot appears on the language dropdown on the top left. 
  3. Click the language dropdown and select Back to Stack.
  4. From the course stack, click Update Translation to translate only the text updates you made for all existing target languages.
  5. When the translation run completes, the Update Translation option disappears.

Additional information:

  • Text updates are determined by translation units called text segments. A text segment breaks down the source text into smaller parts while retaining its meaning in context. Segments can vary in length and structure—from single words to complex sentences or even short paragraphs, depending on context. In Rise 360, a segment is typically the text in a block. Any text change in a segment will retranslate the whole segment. You can see how your course is broken down into segments when you publish to Review 360 and view the translation table.
  • If your project has already been validated, follow the tips in this article to request validation for only the updated content.
  • Importing validation suggestions or updating text in the target languages will not enable the Update Translation option. 
  • Adding blocks, lessons, or sections to any target language will also apply to other languages, but they won't get translated. If you accidentally added them to the target language, simply delete them and recreate them in the source language.
  • Translating updates within the same Articulate 360 subscription contract term does not affect your total purchased translation.

Manage Languages

You can add or remove languages from a multi-language project at any time. You can also save a copy of a language as a separate course.

Add or Replace a Language

To add or replace (retranslate) a language, re-run the translation tool by selecting Translate from the stack tile option in the dashboard or clicking Translate at the bottom left of the stack overview. If the language exists in the course stack or the Archived Translations folder, click Translate again to overwrite existing versions.

Note: Retranslating or using AI translation for existing languages in a multi-language course within the same Articulate 360 subscription contract term does not affect your total purchased translation count. However, if you duplicate the multi-language course or send a copy to someone else, any new translations on the copy—including translating text updates—will be counted.

Remove a Language

To remove a language, click the ellipses (...) beside the language from the stack overview, and choose Archive. The language moves to the Archived Translation folder at the bottom left. You can restore or permanently delete the language from the Archived Translation folder. Retranslating archived languages will also permanently delete the versions in the Archived Translations folder.

Save a Copy of a Language

To save a language as a separate course or microlearning, click the ellipses (...) beside the language from the stack overview, and choose Save as. Give the copy a name and click Save. The copy is saved in the same folder as the multi-language project and includes the default label set for the corresponding language. The label set is also added to the list of built-in label sets under Course Settings.

Tips

Add Collaborators

You can add collaborators to your multi-language course in three ways:

  • Click Share > View collaborators from the course stack or while editing the course to add them via course settings.
  • From your Rise dashboard, hover over the content tile for the course, click the More (...) icon, and select Share to add them via share settings. If the course already has collaborators, a Share Settings option displays instead.
  • Hover over the content tile for the course from your Rise dashboard, click the More (...) icon, and select Move to move the course to a team folder. Everyone who has collaborator access to the team folder you choose will have the same access to the course. 

You can add anyone with an Articulate 360 Teams subscription, but they must be on a subscription with Articulate Localization to access course stacks. Note that course managers and editors can view and edit multi-language courses. However, only course managers can manage languages. Course managers can also initiate course translations or add new languages if they have translation access within the same subscription.

Collaborators without access to Articulate Localization can’t access the course stacks, but course managers can save separate copies of each language to their account when they try to launch the course stack.

Localizing Video and Audio Assets

Localize video and audio assets automatically by inserting closed captions before translation. Since closed captions are text, they will be translated when you add languages to your course. If you already have translated versions of the assets, you can upload them to the corresponding language variants.

Understand Question Banks

Questions drawn from question banks are translated together with the course. When publishing to Review 360 for validation, we recommend including all the questions from the question bank so validators can review them. Learn more about using question banks in knowledge checks and quizzes.

Include Right-to-Left Languages

Rise 360 supports multi-language courses with both left-to-right and right-to-left language versions. In edit mode, right-to-left language versions are in a left-to-right layout, but they will automatically adjust to right-to-left layouts when the course is previewed, reviewed, or published.

Translate Storyline Blocks for Use in Rise 360 Courses

Storyline blocks must be translated and validated through Storyline 360 before the translated versions can be embedded in Rise 360 content. Here’s one approach we suggest:

  1. Finalize your Rise 360 course and Storyline blocks in your source language.
  2. Translate, validate, and import suggestions for the Rise 360 course in Rise 360.
  3. Translate, validate, and import suggestions for the Storyline blocks in Storyline 360.
  4. After completing the Localization workflow in Storyline 360, publish the final version of the multi-language Storyline course to Review 360.
  5. Embed each Storyline language version to the corresponding language in the Rise 360 course. Follow these steps:
    1. Launch the Rise 360 course and click Edit Course.
    2. Click the language dropdown on the top left and select one of the target languages.
    3. Navigate to the Storyline block and click the pencil icon to edit.
    4. When the sidebar opens, click Change and select the Storyline course for this language. Each language version will have the title suffixed with the language code, such as “Onboarding Course - FR” or  “Onboarding Course - DE.”

To publish slides or scenes as separate Review 360 items, save each language as a separate file—including the source language—to turn them into single-language project files. The Review 360 items can then be inserted as separate Storyline blocks. However, localization features like course updates, language validation, and multi-language workflow management won't be available for these copies.

Updated 15 hours ago
Version 21.0
ARTICULATE LOCALIZATION
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