Taking an E-Learning Project Across Borders
By Debbie Folaron

Going global with your e-learning solution? Here are some tips from Eriksen Translations on how to plan your project.

As technology solutions evolve, organizations maintain a set of fundamental requirements for the e-learning applications and programs that they produce. From a technology viewpoint, companies strive to produce programs that are flexible, interoperable, and compatible. In addition, they try to leverage and repurpose content. Preparing an e-learning solution for a multilingual global workforce has the same goals.

Part and parcel of any standard e-learning program are its text and graphics. Authored from legacy or new material and processed in standard or proprietary formats, text most likely will require translation and localization for the user interface, course content, training modules, glossaries, user manuals, and so forth. Even graphical content may need to be repurposed for the global audience.

Similar to the development of monolingual content, an efficient and streamlined workflow enables conversion projects to meet key checkpoints and deadlines within an established budget. Such was the case when New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies asked Eriksen Translations to localize its Virtual College user interface and 14 online certificate program courses from English into a universal Spanish for learners in Spain and Latin America. Developers can glean some valuable tips on preparing for translation and localization from Eriksen's NYU project, which included more than a million words and several hundred graphics. Whether you're developing synchronous or asynchronous Web courseware, multilingual versions of all types of e-learning solutions can be effectively developed and deployed if you follow a few basic steps.

Prepare files

Content that's extracted from authoring and content management systems or a learning management system can benefit from automated computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools. Original content benefits most if it's in a standard format, such as Word, RTF, HTML, or XML.

Leveraging content that has already been translated by reusing or recycling it during different phases of the process significantly reduces cost and time. CAT tools allow developers to create translation memories and multilingual terminology databases, making it easier to work with large volumes of text and frequent content updates. Due to their capability to recall text and terms that have been previously translated, CAT translation memories and terminology databases ensure accuracy and consistency.

For NYU's Virtual College, Eriksen translators used CAT tools to work with Word and XML files of the course content, user manuals, glossaries, and user interface. Standard localization tools were used to decompile, translate, compile, and validate files specific to software applications.

Accommodate language differences

Languages, including scripts, directions, and computer character set encodings, are not alike. Localizing languages in Latin, Cyrillic, Asian, African, Indic, and Semitic scripts range from relatively simple to complex, with some requiring a higher level of expertise.For example, some bidirectional languages, such as Arabic, are typed and read from right to left and other scripts operate according to different punctuation and style rules.

Another issue is space limitations. For instance, some double-byte languages, including Chinese or Japanese, will occupy less space than their English counterpart while other languages, such as Spanish or Vietnamese, may expand the text up to 30 percent.

In terms of computing compatibility and cross-platform operability, multilingual documents can be encoded with different character sets, including ASCII, extended ASCII, local character sets, and Unicode. Reviewing target language and audience issues early in the conversion process will facilitate technical procedures. Localizing applications that have been thoroughly internationalized and Unicode-enabled will require less time and cost than applications that still need to be localized on an English language version.

In the New York University example, Eriksen processed Unicode-based XML documents for the user interface. Because the translation into Spanish would require a 30 percent text expansion, Eriksen made an early request to NYU engineers to adapt the authoring and content management systems and LMS templates.

Use SMEs

Because a person has knowledge of several languages doesn't guarantee that he or she can translate content professionally and competently. Professional translators have a different skill set, such as a vast repository of specialized-language information or subject matter expertise.

Although controlled-source language writing and automated translation environments (for example, computer-assisted translation technologies and machine translation) render certain phases of production more efficient in terms of cost and time, translations performed by actual people remains the key to ultimate quality. To ensure quality in your project, select professional translators who have subject matter expertise, familiar with learning or training environments, and knowledgeable in software translation tools.

NYU's Virtual College was launching e-commerce and corporate management certificate programs in Spanish-speaking countries. Eriksen provided NYU with fluent translators who were highly experienced in the cutting-edge topic to ensure that subject-specific terminology was coined accurately. Meanwhile, editors and project managers who were proficient in CAT tools collaborated as a team to process, update, and deliver expertly translated content within stipulated deadlines.

Localize graphics

Understanding the importance of graphic localization on the globalization of e-learning applications and content is vital. If graphic files are designed to closely accompany the course content, the terminology in the text must be consistent between graphics and content or you risk disorienting the learner. Unfortunately, graphic localization may be one of the translation field's most misunderstood processes.

Ideally, graphics that must be localized should be delivered to the translation project managers as original layered (unflattened) image files, which allows localizers to maintain that setting and format during translation and efficiently manipulate text. Languages other than the original source language may also expand or decrease the text in translation. It's important to leave sufficient space in the graphic file to accommodate the new language. If text in the graphic file isn't maintained on a separate layer, the entire file will need to be recreated, costing time and money.

The graphics for NYU's Virtual College project were created initially from legacy material, but many needed to be recreated by Eriksen to include the new translated text. Screen shots for the user manuals had to be taken from previously translated and localized material. Strict multilingual terminology database management and file management were essential to the process, enabling translators, reviewers, and graphic designers to work with the same vocabulary at the same time.

Collaborate as a team

The success of any e-learning initiative hinges primarily on the seamless communication and collaboration of its team members. Any e-learning project manager must coordinate a team of SMEs, instructional designers, software engineers, and other technology experts to bring the project to fruition. The multilingual component to the translation project brings in an additional team of language experts, editors, reviewers, graphic localizers, and multilingual desktop specialists. Critical to the successful globalization of any e-learning project is the close collaboration between the respective project managers and their teams. To ensure timely completion, communicate the requirements and deadlines for each team during early planning phases.

Technology, language, and the virtual learning environment are a dynamic combination for the globalizing classroom and workplace. As the e-learning industry and technologically refined multilingual solutions continue to advance, occasions for them to converge increases exponentially. With common goals--such as quality, consistency, flexibility, compatibility, and interoperability--multilingual e-learning initiatives can be measured in terms of global knowledge sharing.