Part 2: Course development in Articulate Storyline.
The Articulate Storyline is my favourite authoring tool in the market, especially regarding localisation. If used right, Articulate is a flexible, robust tool that does not limit your creativity.
In this article, I will share my experience and how I develop Articulate online training that can be easily localised.
Along this post, I will briefly mention some tips I gave during Part 1: Writing Phase, so if you want to understand it more, click here.
As I mentioned before, Organization is the key to localisation. Before starting your project folder structure, preferably create a template so you only have to duplicate it when starting a new project.
Root folder:
The root folder is your main folder. I like to name it after the original language of the training, followed by the version.
For the first layer of sub-folders, I normally number according to the usage of the file type and the chronological order in the project. I like to keep logic and have the same order in all my projects, so it is easier to navigate and allows me to work faster.
I also keep a .txt file in my root folder where I keep track of the most relevant changes, and it helps me to remember changes in case the project is on hold for a long period.
Each subfolder has a similar logic (but without the order number). In the case of the folders Visuals, which often contain files that must be edited during localisation, I divided them into: Editable files and Exported:
It might look like too much, but trust me; it’s better to be safe than sorry. I had projects that were localised to 8 languages, and having a good project folder structure will help you when things scale up.
If you want to download a template of my project structure, I will make it available here.
Developing in Storyline
Some have their way of storyboarding their training, and some don’t even do it and start straight away in Storyline. I like designing a draft version in Figma or Adobe XD; as the goal of this post is to talk about localisation, I won’t go into details here.
When you have a rough idea of how your training will look, we need to add images, voice-over narration and animation in Storyline, and this is where many people struggle and where most of your problems can be prevented.
Text and Visuals:
When inserting any visual information into your storyline project, avoid as much as possible having images with text embedded.
In the example below, I wanted to create a menu with custom-designed buttons. Instead of designing it in Photoshop and exporting it ready with embedded text, I create everything in separate elements in Articulate; this will allow me, when exporting and importing Captions, to have the button automatically translated.
Something important to keep in mind when adding text to images is the safe margin for the localised text. Each language has a different character number for the same meaning. Most languages tend to have more characters than English words, so to avoid this problem, always leave a safe margin in your original project; by doing that, you will avoid the number of manual adjustments you need to make when importing your captions.
Another good tip when adding Text Boxes is to make sure the Autofit settings of each box are adjusted correctly.
Always use Expand height or Expand width, depending on your design (like shown below) in case your localised text box might be bigger than the original text box.
In case you are limited to your design and you know the text will be bigger than the space you have, you can make manual changes, like reducing the size of the font or changing Autofill to Fixed Size and selecting add scrollbars.
Adding voice-over/narration
If you are not the person writing your training narration, it’s very hard for them to understand how voice-over will fit the training; for that reason (and also localisation), during the initial phase of the project, I first add the narration using the Articulate Text-to-Speach function.
As I explained in Part 1 of this series, when writing your script, it’s important to break the narration into multiple parts according to where and when they are shown in your slide and timeline.
By doing this, you will have much more control over your narration, making it easy to adjust the timeline, triggers and replace them when you receive the new localised narration files.
Name each file and audio in Storyline according to your script’s sound snippet collum. When naming, I use the following logic:
When your SME/Author approves your training, go ahead and record the original audio using a voice actor or AI; today, the quality of AI is very good and depending on your budget, it could be the best solution.
If you are using a voice actor, remind them to return the files already cut and named according to the sound snippet column. You can now replace your Articulate Text-to-Speach using the Media Gallery or manually.
Well done if you are still hanging in here. We are almost there!
If you follow these tips, your Articulate project will be very robust for localisation, don’t forget to name and save your assets in their correct folders, and when the time for localisation comes, extract the captions using the Articulate Translation feature. You can select to export as a word document or XLIFF.
XLIFF is an extension used by professional translator companies. I normally use Word, as it’s easier for anyone without translation knowledge and special software.
The Translation feature will extract the text data from your project; you can choose to have a thumbnail for reference on each slide.
Ensure the colour or point out the areas that need to be translated before sending it to your translator. I once sent it without explaining in detail and ended up having to pay much more than what the price would be just for essential areas.
When the translation is ready, open the translation feature and import the file back. Please, make sure you don’t change anything but the Translation column in the document. Otherwise, it might not work!
Following all these tips, you might only have to make some small adjustments and alignment, but most of the hard work will be done automatically. If you have narration, replace the narration file, and your training is ready!
This is a simplified version of my workflow, but I hope it helps you to create your own Localisation bulletproof Articulate Storyline project!
If you love it 👏 this article and share it.
For questions, reach me on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leosartori/
Thanks for reading it.
