eLearning has become the standard bearer for communicating throughout your organization, and 2020 created a new urgency for multilingual solutions. The global eLearning market is estimated to grow to $331 billion by 2025. Whether it is HR, marketing, customer training or talent development, eLearning has captured a significant share of your communications, and localizing these courses is becoming a priority for international organizations as they compete and operate globally. Langsouls’ team has years of experience in a variety of platforms including Captivate, Storyline as well as bespoke systems.

Often customers have a more difficult time localizing eLearning courses as they are overwhelmed by the scope of the work involved. Together with our Fractional Language Department, we can breakdown the work and leave you less overwhelmed by the scope and costs of the project. eLearning localization is possibly the most holistic of all localization undertakings since each course is tailored to a very specific audience, and the decision to localize is based on a clear understanding of that audience. Taking this in mind it is crucial to approach the undertaking correctly and getting it right with proper planning is crucial to maintain your timelines and quality. While today’s tools seem to make it easier to localize the content by supporting XLIFF export and extracting the text, there are some limitations and you really need to be aware of them.

Three important things you should be aware of in eLearning Localization

• Terminology-As with all of your content, it is crucial to maintain the correct terminology, but all the more so when you are introducing people to new mission critical concepts, make sure that you have the terminology in place BEFORE you start your localization.
• Graphics & Visuals-Make sure that you have access to all source files for these elements (e.g. InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator files et al). Do not overlook the interactive aspects of the courses such as navigation buttons, hover text, tooltips and so on.
• Multimedia-This is an area that you want to really be aware of while designing your course, for example, if you have a voice-over, or a video, these elements will also need to be localized. These tasks which involve not only added costs such as VO talent and studio time but also QA and the cost of updates can be as much as the initial effort. Therefore, plan this step carefully with localization in mind.