Easy global localization

[Alcoakid]

I recently modified an ethics course for our corporate quality department that has received rave reviews. We took instructor lead discussion scenarios and created short, still photo, vignettes that reflected real-world situations our employees faced in their jobs. This allowed us to turn an instructor lead course into web based training. Now they want us to help develop next year's training in the same fashion.

Here's the challenge. They want us to develop the english version of the course and it will be translated into possibly 23 different languages. Creating the english couirse is not a problem but each translated course will be localized for each culture and country.

I'm hoping that articulate can handle content input from external files so that each location just creates the necessary files and saves them to designated locations with certain file names.

Has anyone worked on a project like this? If so how did you handle the different files from each translation? What pit falls should I look for as I go forward?

Thanks for your help.

Randy

[brianosmi]

Hello Randy,
This may not be as involved as what you need, but at the bottom of the article there are two templates (one for Presenter and one for QM) that will assist in localization of the user interface elements: http://www.articulate.com/blog/localization-guidelines/

[Alcoakid]

The need to change the labels in the articulate environment had not even occured to me.

Thanks for the link Brian.

Randy

[daveperso]

Hi Randy,

Never done what you are about to do, but I suspect all Engage interactions can be changed externally without having to republish. And of course, all externally loading FLVs. There might be a way too of loading quizmaker xml files for the different languages although I don't think this is supported. However, I guess all text published in Powerpoint will not be convertible. Another option you could consider is the user of web objects. These of course can be changed as much as you like, and Presenter will pick up the latest version of the web object every time you publish. You can use web objects to import just about everything.

As Brian says you can change the text labels in Presenter and Quizmaker. One issue that you might run in to is if you use the learning games in Presenter. As far as I know, these do not support special characters.

Sounds like a great idea, not just for multilingual projects, but maybe for projects which have a very similar feel and makeup but which just need the text elements changing. I am thinking about educational projects where students are needing practice using the same skills but on different subject matter.

I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

Regards

[kjaws]

Randy--
Any advice on this project? Were you able to load external text files? If so, we would love the input!