How to Localize your eLearning Content — and Why Translation Isn’t Enough

Translating your eLearning content is more complex than you might think. If you’re an eLearning author, instruction designer, or corporate trainer in a multinational organization, you’ve probably been faced with the challenge of preparing learning content for use in other countries. Obviously, you’ll need to offer the content in the language spoken there. But a simple translation isn’t enough. You also need to adapt the content for the new audience — a process known as localization.

Localization ensures that not only the language, but also the content, images and tone of your learning content are appropriate for the new target audience, and it is crucial to the success of any multilingual training program. The process can be complex, but a good authoring tool can save you time and effort.  In this article, you’ll learn about the differences between translation and localization, how to organize the localization process efficiently, and how to ensure that learners get the most out of your corporate eLearning — no matter where they are in the world.

You might not have heard of localization before, so let’s take a look at what it is and how it differs from standard translation. 

In short, localization does its best to create content that feels like it was created specially for each target group. Localized content reflects local cultural norms, local laws and regulations (for compliance training), and the local language variant (US vs. UK English, for example. This all reduces distractions and incongruencies for the learners, which improves their learning experience and outcomes.

Localizing your eLearning content is essential, but you’ll face numerous challenges during the process. Costs can be high, especially for project management. Managing multiple language variations is complex — and can be particularly challenging if your authoring tool handles each version of a course separately.

Terminology and language quality need to be maintained across multiple courses and projects. Languages, images, and media for each version need to be organized as well. To add another layer of complexity, you may even need multiple versions of some languages — US and British English; Austrian, German, and Swiss German; Mexican and European Spanish. Fortunately, the right authoring tool and an LMS with good multilingual management can make all of this significantly easier.

For the linguistic aspect of localizing your eLearning content, you have a few options available. Depending on your needs and available resources, you can use AI-assisted translation, work with a translation agency, or do the localization in-house. 

Translating your learning content with AI can be a good budget-friendly option, but it is important that you have a native speaker of the new language check the translation to ensure that it is correct. AI translations are far more reliable than options like Google Translate, but they can still contain errors and may need to be edited for clarity and accuracy. 

This option is less suitable for courses with legal compliance information or complex technical information — they may need a high-quality human translation to ensure accuracy. You should also keep in mind that an AI translation cannot adapt content, either culturally or otherwise. You will need a native speaker to review the translation and make any necessary changes to cultural references, units of measurement, currency symbols, etc. 

The authoring system Knowledgeworker Create has KI-KAI — an AI translation assistant — built right in, so you can easily translate your content at the click of a button. This saves a great deal of effort compared to working with an external translation agency, as there is no need to export and import the project. 

Having your content translated by a translation agency is a good choice whenever the quality of the translation is of paramount importance. For example, if a course has legal relevance (such as a compliance course) or is highly technical, AI translations may not be accurate enough. The downside of working with a translation agency is that there is more work to manage. The files will need to be exported and sent to the agency, then reimported after the translation is completed.

If you want the agency to adapt your content, you will need to request this in advance. A standard translation, even from a translation agency, does not include cultural adaptation or changes to symbols, units of measurement, etc. However, some translation agencies offer “transcreation” or “localization” services that can help with this.

You can also handle the localization in-house using your own employees. Unless you have a professional translator on staff, you should not use this option for actual translations. However, you could have an employee at your office in the UK localize content that was originally created in the US, or have an Austrian employee localize content created in Germany. This will let you update any terminology that varies from one country to the other and adjust the spelling and so on for the new audience.

No matter which option you choose for the translation, you should always consider the many other aspects of localization as well. For example, the images in your courses will need to be adapted. If the images contain text, it will need to be translated. If there are images of people, you could consider  updating the images to reflect the ethnicity and style of dress in the new country. Employees in non-Western countries will appreciate imagery that speaks to them and their culture.

Details of the course might need to be changed, as well. Units of measure can vary from country to country. The appropriate point of contact for questions will likely be different. Aspects of the course itself could even change from one region to the next. Always keep these details in mind when localizing your learning content.

The COOP Group is an international concern operating in the retail, wholesale and production sectors. It has rolled out over 900 eLearning courses in 11 different languages. They produce the majority of their learning content in-house, and had initially chosen an authoring tool that seemed to fit their needs. However, the lack of collaborative features and internationalization support quickly led them to look for another solution — which is when they switched to Knowledgworker Create.

In our case study, you can read about how COOP has used Create to publish 966 courses with a core team of only 2.5 full-time equivalents — managing 71 authors throughout their international organization. The keys to their success were collaborative tools, centralized asset management, multilingual support, and — last but not least — course templates that made it easy to apply their corporate branding and appropriate logos for their various subsidiaries. Read more about this success story here.