Imagine a website that speaks every visitor’s language, offering a seamless experience tailored to their cultural expectations. For global businesses, this level of personalization is no longer optional; it’s essential. Concrete CMS, a robust content management system (CMS), provides a solid foundation for creating multilingual websites.

When paired with professional translation services, it becomes a powerful tool for building trust, driving engagement, and expanding your brand’s global footprint.

Whether launching a product in Asia or growing your presence in Europe, Concrete CMS along with a will give you the tools to resonate with your diverse global audiences.

Understanding Concrete CMS’s Multilingual Capabilities

Concrete CMS stands out as a versatile CMS, empowering businesses to manage multilingual websites efficiently. Its features are designed to simplify the complexities of engaging with global audiences:

• Internationalization Add-On

The Internationalization add-on allows seamless management of multiple language versions of your website. It includes tools for language-specific navigation and synchronized updates across all versions, ensuring consistency and simplicity.

• Language Switcher Block

This intuitive feature enables users to toggle between languages effortlessly, creating a smooth and user-friendly browsing experience.

• Localized Themes and Templates

Concrete CMS supports customizable themes and templates, ensuring that both design and functionality are culturally relevant while maintaining brand consistency. These capabilities make Concrete CMS an ideal platform for businesses seeking to cater to a global audience without compromising their brand identity.

Why Professional Translation Services Are Essential

While Concrete CMS equips you with tools to manage multilingual content, the importance of professional translation services cannot be overstated. Here’s how they complement the platform:

• Cultural Relevance

Translating content involves more than language conversion. Expert linguists ensure cultural nuances are respected, avoiding potential misunderstandings.

• Brand Consistency

Professional translators maintain your brand’s tone, style, and message across all languages, ensuring uniformity and authenticity.

• SEO-Optimized Content

Professional translation services incorporate SEO strategies tailored to each language, improving your site’s visibility in international search results. For instance, translating keywords and meta descriptions for German or Chinese markets can significantly boost organic traffic.

Integrating Translation Services with Concrete CMS

To maximize the potential of Concrete CMS’s multilingual features, businesses should implement best practices for integrating translation services:

1. Streamline Translation with Add-Ons

Use tools like the GPI Translation Services Connector to export and import content directly within Concrete CMS, reducing manual effort and errors.

2. Automate Workflows

Concrete CMS supports automated workflows for managing translated content, ensuring efficient updates, and consistent quality.

Learn more about Concrete CMS’s automated workflows.

3. Partner with Professional Localization Experts

Collaborate with seasoned linguists who understand your industry and target markets. Their expertise ensures your content resonates deeply with local audiences.

Example in Action:

Imagine a hospitality business expanding to Spain and Japan. Using Concrete CMS’s Internationalization add-on and professional translation services, the company can localize its website to appeal to Spanish and Japanese customers, ensuring culturally sensitive messaging and user-friendly design.

Conclusion

Concrete CMS’s multilingual capabilities, enhanced by professional translation services, empower businesses to break language barriers and build meaningful connections with global audiences. Whether you aim to enter new markets or strengthen your position in existing ones, this combination provides the tools and expertise for success.

Don’t let language be a limitation. Embrace the power of Concrete CMS and expert translation services to deliver exceptional experiences across cultures. Start your global journey today.

References

1. Concrete CMS Official Documentation
2. GPI Translation Services Connector for Concrete CMS
3. International SEO Best Practices

The post Concrete CMS and Translation Services: Bridging Global Audiences appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

We’re thrilled to announce that Globalization Partners International® has launched a cutting-edge translation connector integrated into WPML! This innovative solution is designed to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of translation workflows for businesses worldwide.

Why the WPML Translation Connector Matters

In today’s global market, seamless communication across multiple languages is crucial. Our collaboration with WPML, a leading name in multilingual WordPress plugins, will streamline the translation process, making it easier than ever for businesses to manage multilingual content effectively. With this new WPML translation connector, you can expect:

• Seamless Integration: Easily integrate with your existing WPML setup for a smooth user experience.
• Enhanced Efficiency: Automate and simplify the translation process to save time and resources.
• Improved Accuracy: Ensure consistent and high-quality translations with advanced technology.
• Cost Savings: The partnership will offer competitive pricing for translation services, helping businesses to maximize their return on investment.

How GPI’s WPML Translation Connector Benefits Your Business

Our new translation connector is designed with your needs in mind. By leveraging GPI’s extensive expertise and WPML’s robust plugin capabilities, this solution offers:

• Automated Workflow: Streamline your translation processes by minimizing manual input, which not only reduces errors but also accelerates project timelines.
• Cost-Effective Solutions: Maximize your return on investment with an efficient translation management system that helps you control costs while maintaining high-quality results.
• Scalable Integration: Easily adapt to your growing translation needs with a solution that scales alongside your business, ensuring seamless performance and minimal downtime.
• Enhanced Accuracy and Consistency: Benefit from automated workflows that reduce the risk of errors and maintain consistent translations across your content.
• Flexibility and Control: Tailor the solution to your specific requirements with configurable settings that give you full control over your multilingual projects.

What’s Next?

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and enhance our translation solutions. For a detailed overview of our new WPML translation connector and to learn how it can transform your multilingual content strategy, visit our website or contact us today.

Join us in celebrating this milestone as we work together to break down language barriers and connect the world more seamlessly!

The post Exciting News: GPI Launches New Translation Connector in Partnership with WPML appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Imagine landing in a bustling city halfway across the world, where the street signs and chatter are in a language you don’t understand.

Now, imagine pulling out your phone, speaking into it, and instantly understanding—or being understood. This isn’t a scene from a sci-fi movie. It’s real life, thanks to the marvels of real-time voice translation technology.

How Does Real-Time Voice Translation Work?

Real-time voice translation might seem like magic, but it’s all science. Here’s a deeper look into the technical process:

1. Speech Recognition:

The journey begins with capturing spoken language and converting it into text. This process is managed by Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems, which have been trained on vast datasets to recognize various phonemes—the distinct units of sound in a specified language—across different accents and intonations. Advances in ASR technology include the use of acoustic models that are adept at understanding speech nuances and employing techniques like beamforming to focus on the speaker’s voice in noisy environments.

2. Machine Translation:

Once the speech is transcribed into text, the challenge shifts to translating this text into the target language. This stage is powered by Neural Machine Translation (NMT), which utilizes deep neural networks to predict the likelihood of sequences of words, often within a single integrated model. These networks are trained on bilingual or multilingual corpuses and can perform direct translations with increasing syntactic and semantic accuracy.

3. Text-to-Speech Synthesis:

The final step involves converting the translated text back into speech. Text-to-speech (TTS) technology, significantly enhanced by AI and deep learning, synthesizes this text into spoken output that mimics natural human speech. Recent improvements in TTS include the use of prosody models that better emulate the emotional tone and rhythm of human speech, making the output feel less robotic and more fluid.

Recent Breakthroughs in Real-Time Voice Translation

The rapid evolution of technology has significantly enhanced real-time voice translation capabilities:

• Context-Aware Neural Networks:

  Modern NMT systems now leverage context more effectively than ever before. Models like Transformers provide greater attention to the context in which words are spoken, significantly enhancing the accuracy of translations. These models are adept at handling long-range dependencies in text, allowing for more coherent and contextually appropriate translations.

• Real-Time Processing:

  Advances in hardware and computational efficiency now allow for near real-time translation, which is crucial for conversations and professional interpretations. Edge computing has also begun to play a role, reducing latency by processing data closer to the device rather than in a distant cloud server.

• Noise Reduction Techniques:

  Sophisticated algorithms help in isolating voices from background noise, making the technology reliable even in crowded or noisy environments like markets, streets, or conferences. Techniques like echo cancellation and voice activity detection are employed to improve the clarity and accuracy of the captured speech.

Where Is This Technology Making Waves?

The impact of voice translation technology is profound across various sectors:

• Emergency Services: Quick translation can be crucial in emergency responses where every second counts and clear communication can save lives.
• Multinational Operations: Businesses with multinational operations utilize voice translation to streamline communication and operations across diverse linguistic landscapes.

Opportunities and Challenges

While real-time voice translation has made remarkable progress, challenges persist:

Handling Sarcasm and Humor

Sarcasm and humor represent some of the most sophisticated levels of human language use, primarily because they often rely on contextual, cultural, and social cues that are not explicitly stated in the text or speech. Here’s a look at why this is challenging for AI:

Context Dependency

Sarcasm often involves saying the opposite of what is meant, and humor frequently relies on puns, wordplay, or cultural references. AI systems, particularly those based on neural networks, struggle with this because they primarily learn from direct correlations between data points. Without a deep understanding of cultural backgrounds and situational contexts, these models may misinterpret the intent or emotion behind the words.

Lack of Training Data

There is a scarcity of labeled datasets specifically for sarcasm and humor, particularly those that cross linguistic and cultural barriers. Training AI systems to recognize these nuances requires not only large amounts of data but also accurately annotated instances of sarcasm and humor, which are inherently subjective.

Subtleties of Language

Sarcasm and humor often involve subtle cues such as tone, timing, facial expressions, and body language, which are difficult to capture in text-based systems. Even in speech-based systems, these subtleties can be challenging to interpret without sophisticated sentiment analysis and emotional recognition capabilities.

Data Privacy

As voice translation technologies become more integrated into personal and professional lives, they collect vast amounts of voice data, which can include sensitive and personal information. The technical challenges in ensuring data privacy include:

• Data Encryption

Voice data must be encrypted both in transit and at rest. However, the encryption must be strong enough to prevent breaches but efficient enough not to delay real-time translation services. Managing this balance is technically challenging, especially with varying standards and regulations across countries.

• Anonymization Techniques

While anonymizing data can help protect user privacy, completely anonymizing voice data without losing important linguistic and emotional cues is complex. Voice data often contains biometric markers, which are inherently personal and can be challenging to anonymize effectively.

• Compliance with Global Standards

With the global nature of voice translation services, compliance with a wide range of international data protection laws (like GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, or LGPD in Brazil) adds another layer of complexity. Each set of regulations may require different handling and protection protocols for voice data, necessitating a flexible and robust compliance framework.

• Secure Data Storage and Access

Ensuring that stored data is not only secure but also accessible in a controlled manner is a major challenge. This involves not just secure databases but also rigorous access controls and audit trails to prevent unauthorized access and track data usage within the organization.

Looking to the Future

The evolution of voice translation technology is likely to focus on further improving real-time processing speeds and the accuracy of translations across even more languages and dialects. Innovations might include more adaptive AI that can learn from interactions in real-time and better understand the user’s intent and context.

Final Thoughts

Real-time voice translation technology is more than a utility—it’s a bridge to global understanding, offering a glimpse into a future where language barriers cease to create boundaries. It redefines how we connect across cultures, making personal and professional interactions seamless, irrespective of language differences.

The post Real-Time Voice Translation: Breaking Language Barriers appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Meta’s No Language Left Behind Project (NLLB-200)  will make Facebook and Instagram posts available in 200 low-resource languages, including Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Bosnian, Kamba, Lao, and other languages spoken mostly in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The NLLB-200 project will also make it possible for the translation of Wikipedia articles into the featured languages, as a result of Meta’s partnership with Wikipedia the open knowledge platform.

The project aims to foster better connections among people through the power of a shared and mutually spoken language. Meta AI’s researchers described their method to boost translations in low-resource and endangered languages.

This involves crowd-sourcing data from platforms like local language Wikipedia with less than 1 million articles and creating a multilingual dataset. The NNLB-200 AI uses a computational model based on a “Sparse Mixture-of-Experts” architecture trained on data obtained with new mining techniques tailored for low-resource languages.

This development would allow for the inclusion of lesser-spoken languages often neglected when training large language models.

Read more about how Meta AI’s NNLB-200 model could safeguard endangered languages.

The post No Language Left Behind: How Meta AI’s System Could Safeguard Endangered Languages appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

In today’s globalized world, reaching a diverse audience is essential for businesses. However, managing translation projects effectively can be a complex and time-consuming task. GPI Translation Services Connector for HCL DX, is a revolutionary tool that simplifies translation workflows within the HCL Digital Experience Platform (DXP). In this blog, we’ll explore how this connector can empower you to initiate and manage translations seamlessly, saving you time and resources.

The HCL DX Connector: A Game-Changer

Through GPI Translation Services Connector for HCL DX, users can effortlessly send content for translation, manage quotes, and efficiently import completed translations back into their system. The HCL Connector is a plug-in that functions as an application within the HCL DX Dashboard. By installing this connector, users can effortlessly send content for translatio4n, manage quotes by adding or removing content from open quotes, and efficiently import completed translations back into the system.

Let’s delve into the key features that make this tool a game-changer for businesses going global:

Streamlined Integration

Enjoy effortless functionality within HCL DX, ensuring a seamless content translation experience entirely within the platform.

Quote and Project Management

Create, send, and track quotes with ease, monitor project status, and mark projects as finished – all from a single, user-friendly dashboard.

Effortless Multilingual Management

Simplify the management of multiple language sites with just a few clicks, making it easier to handle your global content.

Efficient Export and Import

Streamline the export and import process for content translation workflows, saving you time and effort on repetitive tasks.

Collaborative Global Teams

Gain 24/7 access to global teams for collaborative efforts and real-time tracking of translation projects through the GPI Translation Portal.

Comprehensive Dashboard

Access status reports, schedules, and project task lists all in one place, ensuring you stay on top of your translation projects effortlessly.

Export Content Made Easy

The GPI Translation Services Connector for HCL offers two main methods to export content for translation, making the process user-friendly and efficient:

Bulk Export

Conveniently select an entire library from HCL DX and seamlessly send it for translation. This approach is perfect for those looking to translate extensive content effortlessly, it allows users to select the base library, the target language(s), and share essential comments with GPI’s translation team in just a few clicks.

Granular Export

Granular export allows you to choose a specific item from HCL DX and send it for translation, with the option to include its children. This method provides flexibility for translating specific content. This can be accomplished through creating a customized package and enabling users to make granular selections of items within the selected base library. This flexibility ensures that your translation needs are met precisely.

Both export methods are designed to simplify the initiation of translation requests, project tracking, and the importing of translations – all with just a few clicks. The connector dashboard offers a comprehensive overview of quote and project statuses, along with easy access to GPI’s Translation Portal.

These export methods work seamlessly with base libraries that have existing localized versions, which are used to identify target languages available for the base library.

When the translations are completed, the user can import translations through the dashboard creating new versions of the imported items for the target languages.

Custom Workflows for Enhanced Automation

The connector goes a step further by providing the capability to automate translation requests through custom workflows for preconfigured items.

The GPI Translation Services Connector for HCL DX will make managing the creation and updating of multilingual easier resulting in saved time, reduced cost, and quicker time to market. It does not require you to alter your workflow, as it is designed to seamlessly work with your current processes. The dashboard allows you to see all translation projects and quotes at a glance so you can easily the status of everything. If you are an HCL DX user, this connector will make reaching globally a breeze.

The post Translation Made Easy: Automate Your Workflow with the GPI Connector for HCL DX appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

The GPI HCL DXP Translation Services Connector is a robust solution designed to optimize translation workflows within the HCL Digital Experience platform. This blog delves into the functionalities and features offered by the connector, empowering users to efficiently manage translation projects and streamline the localization process.

Streamlined Integration and Seamless Functionality

The GPI HCL Connector seamlessly integrates with HCL DXP, delivering a cohesive user experience for translation workflows. As an embedded application within the HCL Content Editor UI, it empowers users to initiate translations, manage quotes, and import completed translations seamlessly, all within the platform itself.

By eliminating the requirement for manual content transfers, this integrated approach significantly enhances workflow efficiency. Conveniently, the connector can be downloaded from SoFy, providing users with easy access, and ensuring a streamlined experience.

Key Features for Effective Translation Workflows:

Content Translation Experience: The GPI HCL Connector offers a cohesive content translation experience within HCL DXP. Users can effortlessly initiate translations, manage quotes, and track project status, all from a centralized platform. This eliminates the need for switching between multiple tools, thereby streamlining the translation process.

Quote and Project Management: The connector streamlines quote and project management tasks, offering users a simplified and efficient experience. Users can effortlessly create new quote requests, submit content for quotation, and track the readiness of quotes within the connector. Additionally, the connector enables effective project tracking and provides functionality to mark projects as finished. The ability to manage multiple language sites seamlessly enhances project scalability.

Moreover, users will benefit from free access to GPI’s Translation Portal, a comprehensive and customizable communication and collaboration platform. This portal grants companies immediate, secure, and global access to all their translation information. It encompasses features such as quote management, project status reports, glossary management, and a secure client review and approval portal. Additionally, the Translation Portal offers fully customizable translation budgeting and spending reports, providing businesses with valuable insights into their translation investments.

Flexible Export Methods: The GPI Translation Services Connector provides two primary methods for exporting content. Bulk Export allows users to select entire libraries from HCL DXP for translation. On the other hand, Single Item Export enables the translation of specific items, optionally including their children. This flexibility caters to various translation requirements.

Customizable Workflows: The connector offers the capability to automate translation requests through custom workflows. This feature eliminates repetitive manual tasks by defining predefined actions for selected items. It facilitates collaboration between content creators, translators, and reviewers, optimizing efficiency and reducing human error.

Comprehensive Reporting and Dashboard: Gain real-time insights into translation projects through the GPI Translation Portal. The connector provides a comprehensive dashboard that offers status reports, schedules, and project task lists. Users can access quotes, proposals, and other project materials, enabling efficient project monitoring and reporting.

Efficient Translation Delivery and Collaboration: The GPI Connector fosters efficient collaboration between stakeholders involved in the translation process. It provides a collaborative environment where content creators, translators, and reviewers can communicate, review translations, and maintain consistency in terminology and branding across languages. The automation capabilities streamline translation delivery, reducing turnaround time and ensuring accuracy.

Enhanced Control and Technical Insights: With the GPI Connector, users have enhanced control and visibility over the translation process. Project progress can be monitored, costs tracked, and detailed reports accessed for performance analysis. The connector empowers businesses with technical insights into translation projects, enabling data-driven decision-making and optimization of translation workflows.

Conclusion

The GPI HCL DXP Translation Services Connector is a powerful tool that streamlines translation workflows within the HCL Digital Experience platform. By seamlessly integrating with HCL DXP, it provides users with enhanced control, efficiency, and collaboration capabilities. Through flexible export methods, customizable workflows, and comprehensive reporting, businesses can optimize their translation processes and deliver multilingual content effectively.

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In what can be classified as a show of nationalism, Nigeria has approved a policy that will allow students in all primary schools (the first six years of learning), to be taught in their native language. To date, English, the official language of the country, has been the primary language for education. While Nigeria gained its independence from the British Empire in 1960 after nearly a century of being under British rule, the official language has remained English.

Nigeria is home to over 500 indigenous languages, so implementing this policy will not be immediate. A major factor in the implementation will be the availability of materials in the various native languages.

The prior education policy stated that children in monolingual communities would be taught in their native language for the first three years. The main obstacle to this policy was having access to enough educational resources in those languages to support education.

The adoption of class materials into these native languages to support the new policy will take time, funding, and native, qualified speakers to translate the English materials into the native languages.

While implementing the policy will be slow and most likely challenging, it will help preserve the native languages of Nigeria. Additionally, in more rural areas where English is less common, it will facilitate learning in those regions.

To read more: A new policy for Nigerian languages in the country’s education system

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When you plan to achieve a wider audience for your website – SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is an important task. Translating your website is an additional, however essential step, to rank higher in the search engine and drive more traffic into your website.

While there is no standard way to translate a custom-built multilingual PHP website, there are various parts of your website that requires special localization configuration/implementation. Including, a backend (dynamic content from DB) and website interface (UI). This blog will collectively shed light on different aspects and implementation methods.

Internalization Challenges

Internationalization usually is a one-time effort, but it is a challenging one and often underestimated by programmers. Various aspects need to be planned when structuring different components of the website/ app UI and the backend.

There are fundamental differences between languages that need to be taken into consideration when localizing your website. These include language nuances, date formats, grammar rules (such as pluralization).

For more tips on RTL localization, please visit localization for RTL languages.

Methods and Tools for Internationalization

For a multilingual website, you need to consider the following features:
–       A language switcher
–       Load translated content based on geolocation or browser language
–       URL routing

PHP Array Files
PHP associative arrays are the easiest way to translate a site. Translated strings are stored in a file for each language.

The strings are then retrieved and displayed inline according to the selected language.

This approach has been used for a long time and seems to be simple however, it is hard to maintain with a larger app scale, and in a variety of languages.
For example, the pluralization for English works differently from other languages. In Arabic, this implies a challenge and would require some conditional switching which might clutter up the code.
Some frameworks that use this approach are, Laravel, CodeIgniter, Kohana, and Zend.

GETTEXT Extension

The classic GETTEXT function has been around for a long time, where it used to be considered a rule of thumb for the internalization of applications and websites in many programming languages. Using the extension may be a little problematic in PHP, where you cannot install the extension into your hosting environment. In this case, PHP-GETTEXT can be used.

Many frameworks support internationalization through GETTEXT like Yii, Zend, CakePHP, Drupal, and WordPress. So, it is better to rely on a framework to build a multilingual website, rather than building a custom website and handling it yourself in the code.

.PO Files

For a custom PHP website, you will need to set up your .PO files to store translations in plain text or use a tool to extract the strings for you. When the translations are completed, the .PO files need to be compiled into .MO files and stored in a translation directory.

Database Table Translation

Implementing a simple but efficient database design is key for performance and scalability.

Approach 1: For every translatable entity in the database, a table is created, and corresponding translated columns are added for each language.

This approach might work for small websites and few languages, but for large websites and 15 languages, this solution is not the best in terms of performance and scalability.

Approach 2: A table is created for each language.

This will work best with small websites and a couple of languages.

Approach 3: As you can see below, this is a simple translation implementation on the database that can be generalized to all translatable entities in the database. This approach is simple and scalable as we add new languages to the website, it will not require any alteration to the database schema. Also, the queries developed to extract content based on the language are not complex.

Conclusion

When building a website, it is useful to consider localization best practices from the beginning, especially for business that targets to expand globally.

Most CMS’s and frameworks have built-in localization capabilities that make a developer’s life easier to build a multilingual website out of the box. Although Python, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails, are widely used, flat PHP websites are still being preferred by many developers.

The post Easy Ways to Translate Your PHP Website appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

eLearning has proven to be remarkably effective in modern education and across companies internally. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s transforming how we see eLearning from a supportive method to be an alternative approach.

When considering eLearning tools, one of the major factors that needs to be evaluated is support for translation and localization. If the tool doesn’t support out of the box support for localization, translation workflows can become a nightmare.

Articulate Rise is an elegant eLearning authoring tool, it produces responsive and SCORM compliant powerful courses. It provides support for localization out of the box with simple steps. Moreover, the export/import module facilitates professional translation services.

In this blog, I will highlight Articulate Rise’s support for right-to-left (RTL) languages.

Export/Import Module

A first step in localizing your eLearning course is to duplicate the content. This creates a clone of the course and will act as the translated course once the translation process is completed.

1. Duplicate Course

2. Export Course

XLIFF is the standardized format for localizable files. It’s recommended to include HTML formatting to preserve any formatting for course elements. The XLIFF file is sent to your translation services provider for translation.

3. Import Course

Once the translation is complete, the file is ready to be imported back to your cloned course.

Enabling RTL in Articulate Rise

After importing and applying any necessary contextual edits, the course is ready to be imported to your LMS. Unfortunately, Articulate Rise does not support RTL languages (ex: Arabic and Hebrew), so the text will still be left aligned, which is a deal breaker for many as this distorts user experience for native RTL language speakers.

The final edits for displaying RTL text correctly need to be applied after exporting the course in preparation for publishing in the LMS.

Steps for applying RTL specific changes in Articulate Rise:

1. After exporting the course, go to main folder -> scormcontent -> index.html.
2. Edit the HTML opening tag as follows:

This change will correct 90% of the RTL display issue.

3. Element Specific CSS. Some elements will require CSS to correct alignment as the page level “dir” attribute will not be enough. As an example, the code below will transform the item list as illustrated.

Summary

To summarize, Articulate Rise is a great tool for building multilingual courses with simple and clean user interface. The localization capabilities provided out of the box are great to support the translation workflow from start to end. The only downside is lack of RTL support. This can be controlled by simple HTML and CSS hacks to the main index file.

The post Articulate Rise: RTL Language Support appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

The Articulate Storyline tool for exporting/importing content into XLIFF (an XML-based format used by most translation tools) is a great tool for professional translations.

In this blog, I will go through translating an Articulate Storyline project for Arabic (which will also apply to other RTL languages) and adding a few touches to the files to simplify layout modifications after the import.

Step 1: Export Content into XLIFF

From the File menu option, click Translation > Export to XLIFF.

This will generate an XLIFF file containing all your project content and will be ready to be sent for translation.

Step 2: Translation Begins

Using a professional translation tool, the translator will start working on your content localization.

Step 3: Tips for Developers

A few stylistic changes can be applied to the XLIFF file before import, this pre-processing is essential in the sense that it assists to construct your project in a RTL compliant state.

One simple modification is to change all “Left” justified elements to be “Right” justified. Please note that this is not a generic role and it requires good understanding of how styles work for Articulate XLIFF generated files. Even though this change is simple, it provides major help to course designers because it will reduce all the manual work needed to re-order slide elements to be RTL compliant.

Step 4: Import XLIFF to Articulate Storyline

After the translation is complete, the file is ready to be imported back to the project. Note that this will overwrite all content with the imported one.

Step 5: Review and Apply Final Touches

Once the import is complete, you will be able to see the translations in place along with all the edits that you applied to the XLIFF file to assist necessary RTL layout flipping.

Summary

Articulate Storyline is a great tool providing RTL support, and with the export/import to XLIFF functionality, professional translation became feasible, too. While RTL support still encounters challenges, these workarounds make things easier.

In the next blog, I will introduce RTL tips and tricks for Articulate Rise.

The post Articulate Storyline Localization for RTL Languages appeared first on Globalization Partners International.