Part 1: Writing Phase.

As an instructional designer, there is nothing worse than to realise that you need to localise training that wasn’t created with localisation in mind. For localisation to be efficient, it must be planned properly from the early stages. This post series covers technical aspects that will make your online training robust and localisable.

Scripting:

If you are not scripting your online training, sorry to say, but you are doing it wrong. Scripting is essential for content maintenance and updates, especially if you plan to localise your training.
In case your training is narrated, you also need to organize your script differently so that it can also be used for translation and help you while developing your course in an authoring tool or video editing software.

Your script file should include a minimum of 3 columns:

Sound Snippet or File name:
To create a robust script, you need to break your narration into small sound snippets; each of them needs to be named with a unique code that you can use to identify what part of the training this sound snippet belongs to. I like to use something like this: Language-Module-Chapter-Sequence.
It can vary depending on the complexity of your training. Still, the logic behind it is to make that each sound snippet is easily recognized and replaced during the production or localisation. It’s normal during the localisation process to re-record small parts of your narration due to translation mistakes, narration mistakes, etc. Creating your script will make it easier for you to write, translate, record and store your audio files.

Later on, during the development phase, I will also explain how organizing your script this way will also make exchanging the narration inside of the project much easier. Independently of the tool, you use to create your training.

Narration:
While writing your script, try to break the sequence in the most efficient way that won’t interfere with the passing of the voice actor or AI. The main reason is that you want to make it easy to find and re-record parts of the narration that need to be corrected. Trust me, during localisation it happens more than you imagine.

Also, you can isolate sentences that are often used, like Click here or Click forward, to be recorded/translated only one time, saving you some time and money in translation and voice recording.

Translation:
Having your translation together with your original script is very handy.
It’s important to remember that in some projects, for example, an Articulate Storyline training, you will also have the caption export file out of Storyline. Containing all the text inside of your articulate project, I won’t go into details about it, or this post will be giant, but having the script as a source for narration translation reduces the number of documents you need to manage.

Assets creation:

If your training contains images or any graphical representation, it shouldn’t include any text. Nothing is worse than working on a training localisation full of images with text embedded. This makes production harder, slower and consequently more expensive.

Try always to design the images separated from the text and insert the text in the authoring tool or video editing software. If you are developing your training in Storyline, it will make it easier to export the captions and have your image localised without any need to edit the image in the software you used to create it.

If not possible, save the editable file and store it in a well-organized assets folder nomenclature of the sound snippet:
Project folder/Assets/Module/Chapter/Graphic.psd

If you are not creating a video training, avoid using embedded video containing audio or text, it will create a giant workload for localisation, as the video will need to be edited separately. Most of the time, the learning goals can be achieved using an alternative media.

Project Folder organization:

Organization is key for a good locasalition; if your project folder is messy, localisation will be a nightmare. Normally, a training that will be localised will be touched by multiple people; for that reason, a good folder structure will make it easy to navigate and find documents in your project.

A good way to organize your project folder is to use sub-folders to separate each file type, for example:

Project_folder_EN/Script
Project_folder_EN/Assets
Project_folder_EN/Assets/Images
Project_folder_EN/Assets/Videos

It’s very commum during localisation that you need to replace files. Don’t keep everything in one single folder. It’s not robust and will make your localisation process harder.

Localisation is one of the most complex things in an E-learning project. There is a lot to talk about, and I hope to have transferred some of my knowledge after working for many years on global and multilingual e-learning projects.

In the next part of the series of posts, I will talk about the development phase. Please follow me on Medium or Twitter so that you can catch the next posts!

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