E-learning has come of age and in some contexts, it may be the only way to accomplish new skills and knowledge. Of course, e-learning is now international and that means it as to be professionally translated. This can be quite a challenge, but with the right approach and materials, you can make it easier on yourself. Here are some tips to meet the challenge of e-learning translation.
Use professional translation services
It doesn’t matter what sort of translate is involved, if it’s important, then you will need to use professional translation services. Of course, most translators tend to specialize in one or more particular languages and also in one or more branches of translation. With the changing face of translation today, that means using a professional translator who has expertise in e-learning translation.
Be careful with graphics
Graphics can be culturally sensitive. It’s best to keep to images that are culturally neutral and that have no text embedded in them. If text is embedded in a graphic image, it will have t be extracted to translate it, which means complications with the source files and re-touching of the image.
Use content that is translation friendly
That means trying to avoid content that has a lot of idioms or colloquialisms in it. Another way of making it easier for translators is to use a lot of bulleted points rather than extended paragraphs. Just think while you are creating your content that it has to be translated. What can you do to make it easier and faster to do that?
Use Unicode wherever you can
Where e-learning is to be translated it should use apps that can deal with the sorts of characters that are used in the target languages. Unicode UTF-8 should be used for all files such as HTML and XML. Avoid text which is displayed in what are sometimes called “tofu boxes”.
Avoid using embedded text used for translation
It’s not a good idea to use script code like VB Script or Javascript for all that content which is to be translated. The professional translation services charged with translating or localizing the content may have to spend time filtering the script out using special parsers.