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A guide for localizing elearning courses

By Acclaro

This elearning localization guide provides an in-depth look at the growing importance and benefits of localizing elearning content. The global elearning market is rapidly expanding due to corporations’ increased adoption of elearning over the last few years.

Why is localizing elearning content important?

Localizing elearning content is crucial for organizations operating globally or with multilingual workforces. It enhances accessibility, ensures compliance with local regulations, and maintains a consistent global company culture. Effective localization goes beyond translation; it involves adapting content to reflect local cultures, traditions, and technical standards. This includes considerations like color symbolism, imagery, formatting, and user interface design, all of which impact how elearning courses are perceived in different markets. By localizing elearning content, organizations can improve brand equity, increase employee and client retention rates, and ensure a globally consistent customer experience.

Localizing elearning content has many benefits. The most important is increasing accessibility for organizations with a global footprint or domestic organizations relying on a multilingual workforce. Here is a breakdown of the various reasons why organizations should localize their elearning content.

Create a global culture

Regardless of cultural variations that may exist within each global market, training staff on company protocols, products, and services helps instill a recognizable global company culture wherever they are.

Create a globally consistent customer service experience

Global companies support local and international customers. Ensuring consistency in product service and delivery wherever clients may be in the world drives revenue and client retention.

Increase brand equity and value

Localized elearning increases brand equity and value by improving revenue, profitability, and employee & client retention rates through a globally consistent customer experience and culture.

Ensure compliance

Localizing elearning content is more than translating words. It is about creating content specific to each target market. This is more important than addressing the safety, regulatory, and legal compliance necessary for each location.

A blend of services for elearning localization success

Translation

The translation of source content into the language of each target audience is just the beginning of localizing an elearning course and represents the minimum necessary to improve effectiveness.

Localization

Localization of an elearning course represents the culture in the content translation and the standards and traditions reflective of those markets, such as colors, images, symbols, format, and technical accessibility and usability.

Images

Imagery plays an integral part in each market. Hofstede’s cultural considerations best outline these, which include power distance between executives and employees (the US is minimal, Japan is large), collectivism (Asia) versus individualism (West/US), risk avoidance (high in Asia, low in the US), and long-term (China) versus short-term (US) orientation.

Colors

Colors carry quite a bit of symbology which changes based upon the target market and culture you wish to enter. It is important to understand the meanings of colors within each target market. For example, while yellow is considered a color of happiness in most of the world, it is regarded as a color of mourning in Mexico and one of royalty in Thailand. Blue is another color considered ubiquitous for its sense of calm, serenity, or association with masculinity, but it is associated with immortality in the East. In the Middle East, blue is considered a color of protection and safety. In Belgium, blue is associated with gifts for baby girls. The colors you utilize within each target market will impact how your elearning courses are perceived. Working with localization professionals can help you determine the best color combinations for each target market.

Symbols

Just as color and images play a role in localization, so do symbols. Symbols inherently carry meaning and thus their utilization. It is important to recognize that some symbols may offend depending upon the target market entered. For example, a leading philanthropic organization is known as the Red Cross in Christian countries but as the Red Crescent in Muslim countries.

Formatting

Formatting is another aspect that should be considered when localizing elearning content. Formatting includes cultural considerations such as date format, currency symbols, and reading direction (e.g. Arabic and Hebrew are read right to left versus English, which is read left to right) to ensure proper navigation.

Technical considerations

Technical considerations during the localization process include the user interface and internationalization of course platforms to ensure they can handle bidirectional languages (such as Hebrew and Arabic) and character-based languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).

Transcreation

Transcreation differs from translation in that transcreation recreates a message, idea, or symbol within a target market to ensure the semantic impact is the same. An excellent example of transcreation is Kellogg’s Rice Krispies’ ‘Snap, Crackle, and Pop,’ which represent the elves’ names appearing on the cereal box and the sound the cereal makes when milk is added. These names were ‘transcreated’ within each market to better reflect the names associated with each sound. For example, in Germany, the characters’ names are ‘Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!’ In most northern European countries and Italy, the character’s name is ‘Piff! Paff! Poff!’ In Finland, they are ‘Poks! Riks! Raks!’, Mexico is ‘Pim! Pum! Pam!’, and French Canadian is ‘Cric! Crac! Croc!’. It’s important to note that even within North America, there are three separate sets of names for the characters based on the country you are located in.

Multilingual multimedia production

Multilingual multimedia production is incredibly important in localizing content and includes subtitling or voiceover considerations to ensure audio tracks are understood within each market.

Elements of elearning content localization

The localization of each elearning course will depend upon how the course is created and structured, but the basic items that need to be localized include:

Text

Content
Presenter notes
Onscreen text
Quizzes and answers

Images/Graphics/Animations

Colors
Layout
Screen captures from localized programs
Animated mouse cursor movements

Fonts

Fonts may need to be localized based on the language. This includes separate fonts for character-based and bidirectional languages.

Measurement units and formatting

Measurement units such as metric versus imperial, currency conversations, and date formats must all be localized to reflect proper utilization within each target market.

Layout/user interface

The importance of localizing the user interface cannot be understated, as proper localization ensures accessibility and usability for each target market. User interfaces need to consider bi-directional and character-based languages. For instance, in bidirectional language countries of the Middle East, the user interface must generally be ‘flipped’ to accommodate a right-to-left reading format.

Audio and video

Audio and video localization reflect the translation and interpretation of audio files to ensure proper comprehension within each target market. Another important consideration is the narration tone.

Narration tone

It is important to recognize the teaching and learning traditions of each culture. In the US, an informal tone may be appropriate to reach your audience best, but in Asian countries, a more formal tone may be best.

Cultural values

It is important to ensure that your elearning courses properly reflect the cultural values of each of your target markets. An excellent example is how the popular, long-running series ‘The Simpson’s localizes the patriarch’s beer consumption habits. The Simpsons simply substitutes orange juice in the Middle East, where alcohol consumption may be forbidden. As opposed to becoming inebriated from alcohol, Homer experiences a sugar rush from the orange juice. This ensures that the series adapts to the cultural values of the Middle East while remaining true to the source content. Localizing cultural values is an important aspect of elearning to ensure that courses do not offend.

Mistakes to avoid when localizing elearning content

Idioms and phrases

It is best to eliminate idioms and slang from the source content. Idioms such as ‘touching base’ or ‘hit a home run’ do not carry the same meaning, if any, within each target market.

Abbreviations

Most abbreviations do not translate into something different across languages. Only the long form of each word or phrase should be utilized regardless of industry.

Complex language and technical terminology

It is always best to utilize simplified language at a lower register wherever possible to ensure the greatest ease of comprehension and retention.

Hard-coded text boxes

Text expansion and contraction within the translation process can create many quality control issues if text boxes are hard coded in the source content. It is important to recognize that expansion and contraction can vary by as much as 20-30% depending upon the language pair.

Un-editable files

Utilizing uneditable files during the localization and translation process means that those files will need to be recreated for each target language. This can be incredibly time-consuming and costly, increasing room for error between the source and each target language.

Incorrect formulas and equations

It is important to double- and triple-check all formulas and equations. Technical translators and professional linguists often point out source file errors that must be corrected before continuing with the localization and translation process.

How to manage risk in the localization of elearning courses

There are several ways to mitigate risk in the localization of elearning content that will ensure that your elearning courses are as effective within each of your target markets as they are within the country of origin.

Involve your localization provider early in the creation of your elearning courses

Involving your localization provider in the development of your elearning courses can help eliminate costly errors. For example, developing your courses on a platform that needs to be correctly internationalized to accommodate character-based languages may require a complete rework. Utilizing heavily regionalized content will introduce localization delays as the content is adjusted for each market.

Define quality upfront with your localization provider(s)

Each organization defines quality differently. For some, it simply means there are no complaints from the target market. For other organizations, quality is defined as time to market or linguistic accuracy. For many, quality is defined by cost. The reality is that quality is a combination of all these factors, but defining which are most important to your organization will help your localization provider better adhere to these standards. Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) may also be helpful to measure adherence to established quality measures over time.

Develop a style guide

Developing a style guide for your elearning courses will ensure your localization provider understands your organization’s expectations for each market. Style guides address formatting, date, time conventions, formality, tone, and register and may also dictate color and symbol utilization.

Develop and implement a glossary of terminology

Most localization providers treat a glossary of terminology as mandatory terminology that each linguist must use in translating course content. A glossary mitigates terminology concerns for each target market and allows for ease of updating course content. Work with your localization provider and in-country teams to develop the glossary of terminology that best reflects your needs.

Leverage technology

Technology utilization varies greatly between localization providers. Many providers follow a time-consuming, step-by-step process that risks introducing human error between each step of file analysis, distribution, reassimilation, and terminology choices. Today, advanced localization providers utilize AI and machine learning technologies to eliminate repetitive tasks, significantly reducing turnaround time and minimizing risk. In addition, the incorporation of translation memories and advanced machine translation tools eliminate errors in terminology utilization. The most advanced technology secures content through a continuous publishing environment that translators log into. This eliminates file distribution and creates a secure environment for all your content which may be especially important when dealing with product releases or announcements.