Effective Translation to Reach Learners Worldwide

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Developing accessible training includes making it available in the languages your learners speak. In this episode, we talk to Nick Strozza and Larry Pilotto from Interpro Translation Solutions to understand how to ensure that eLearning translations are successful.

 

 

Show notes:

Interpro Translation Solutions shares best practices for eLearning translations, including the importance of early collaboration on the project.

• Early Engagement is Key: Engage with your translation partner early in the project to accommodate localization needs and ensure translations are not an afterthought.
• Localization vs. Translation: Understanding the difference between localization and translation is important. Localization adapts content beyond direct translation, considering cultural nuances, graphics, and formatting to make content feel native to the audience.
• Comprehensive Planning: Accurately scope the translation project to avoid surprises. This includes analyzing all elements of eLearning courses, such as audio, video, and text, and to plan for any challenges.

• Technology and Trends: Embracing emerging technologies and trends in translation, like translation memory tools and AI, can enhance the efficiency and consistency of translated content, though human oversight remains essential for quality.

   

Read “eLearning Translation: Creating Linguistically Inclusive eLearning” by Angeline Evans

Read “A Crash Course in eLearning Translation: Introduction and Benefits,” by Interpro Translation Solutions

Powered by Learning earned an Award of Distinction in the Podcast/Audio category from The Communicator Awards and a Silver Davey Award for Educational Podcast. The podcast is also named to Feedspot's Top 40 L&D podcasts and Training Industry’s Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide.

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Transcript:

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] As you prioritize accessibility in eLearning, you may need to make sure your content is understandable in multiple languages. Translating can be a much easier process if you take the right steps before you begin the project. I think that just, um, kind of working with the potential translation partner or resource up front when possible, you know, don't consider it an afterthought.

Nick Strozza: Um, you know, try to make sure your source versions are available and accurate and clean and just kind of be mindful of the localization component of the content.

Susan Cort: That's Nick Strozza, CEO of Interpro Translation Solutions. Nick and Interpro eLearning Manager Larry Pilotto, join Angeline Evans and me to break down how to make your eLearning translation a success next on Powered By Learning.

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci. [00:01:00] Interactive d'Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that empower learners to improve quality and boost performance. Learn more at dvinci. com.

Susan Cort: Joining me today is Angeline Evans, Client Solutions Consultant at d'Vinci, and Nick Strozza and Larry Pilotto from Interpro Translation Solutions. Interpro offers world class translation and interpreting services in any modern language, and they often help organizations that are creating custom eLearning. Welcome, Nick and Larry.

Angeline Evans: Hi, guys. Thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Nick Strozza: Great to be here.

Larry Pilotto: Thanks for having us. It's great to be here.

Nick Strozza: Yes, very excited.

Susan Cort: d'Vinci's had the pleasure of working with your team over the years, and we thought we'd have you on Powered by Learning to help our listeners understand best practices in eLearning translations.

Susan Cort: So Nick, start out by giving us an overview of Interpro and then tell us a little bit about your role there.

Nick Strozza: Sure, thanks. Yeah, again, excited to be [00:02:00] here. So you can think of Interpro as Powered by Learning, a language company. We're the language people. So anything that needs to go from one foreign language to another is where we come in, usually English to Spanish, Chinese, something like that.

Nick Strozza: Um, we don't build content, but we are turnkey. So we are able to work with pretty much any file format, um, and deliver back a quality product. Deliverable in whatever language it might be. I am CEO, and basically I think of myself as a support person. Really enjoy working with clients like, like yourselves, finding a good solution and helping everyone here be the best version of themselves that they can be.

Nick Strozza: So I'm definitely very, very proud of the type of work we do. It's very rewarding and we have great people like Larry.

Susan Cort: Well, Larry, tell us a little bit about your role.

Larry Pilotto: So I am the manager of eLearning and desktop publishing for Interpro. So I kind of get involved at different points in client [00:03:00] projects.

Larry Pilotto: You know, initially, I'll be involved in the quote stage and trying to put together job scopes. And that kind of follows through to production side. Um, Where we kind of evaluate what we have to work with and come up with ideal workflows and make sure the work gets done to our standards.

Susan Cort: Well, we appreciate you both joining us today and looking forward to hearing some of your insights.

Angeline Evans: Yes, I'm so excited to talk about eLearning translation. So I thought we could start by just level setting the audience because I feel like translation and localization are often used interchangeably. And I know it was a piece that I needed to be educated about. So I'd love if you could just break that down for us just to start us off.

Nick Strozza: You are right. This does get interchanged quite frequently. Um, and they are. Pretty much go hand in hand for the most part. According to the Globalization and Localization Association, or GALA for short, localization is the [00:04:00] process of adapting a product or content to a specific locale or market. So not just translating the words, but adapting the messaging.

Nick Strozza: I like to consider localization as like taking translation to the next level. So it's not just translating the copy, it could involve things like colors, adapting graphics, converting local requirements of measurement, currencies, formatting, and it's adapting the design, so essentially, like I said, taking translation of the terms to the next level with the ultimate goal of something that is localized is that someone who speaks that language won't know it was translated from English, so that someone who reads this in Italian isn't going to be able to tell.

Nick Strozza: That this was translated from English. So that's the ultimate goal that it really, really adapts to, to that native speaker of that target language.

Angeline Evans: Thank you. That's a really great way to, to describe that. So [00:05:00] now that we know the difference and, and a lot of the work that I know I've had the opportunity to partner with you on has involved eLearning translation, and there's a bit of a process to it.

Angeline Evans: So I thought we could also just step through that process for folks listening. So we can have like, you know, a bird's eye view of what's involved. Because it's not just, uh, you know, hey, here's my English version. Let's just translate it. There are some steps and considerations along the way.

Larry Pilotto: Sure. Um, for us, the, the process starts at the, at the quote stage, um, and, and to really do this effectively, we need to have access to the source files, whatever they are.

Larry Pilotto: That could be your Articulate Storyline 360 course, it could be an Adobe Captivate course, it could be an Articulate Rise course. Um, we really want to have access to the source files so we can start to really dig in and identify all the different types of assets that are going to be [00:06:00] involved in the project scope.

Larry Pilotto: Um, they're, they're, you know, with eLearning, it's, there's a lot of moving parts, right? You've got on screen text, you could have video, you could have audio, um, there's closed captioning. There's a lot of stuff to identify up front to make sure that we scope the job out correctly from the beginning. Um, that really helps the project go smooth.

Larry Pilotto: So the first step for us is getting access to the source files. And once we do, uh, eLearning engineering person will start to go through the files, and isolate all the different types of assets that need to be translated. So we'll go, and I'll use Storyline as an example here, we'll go through and, you know, identify all the different assets and extract them.

Larry Pilotto: And that's kind of the starting point for us because those different assets need to go, um, to different areas of [00:07:00] expertise, right? The audio files will need to be evaluated by a professional voiceover recording studio. If there's video, it will need to be, you know, reviewed by a multimedia engineer. So that's really step one.

Larry Pilotto: Once we get access to the source files, we will kind of move into a file preparation stage. The translators don't actually work in the native authoring application that you send us. So they won't work in Storyline, they won't work in Captivate, they won't work in Rise. Um, so part of the prep stage for us is to get, the text that needs translation into our translation environment, and then that's what we use to get accurate word counts, identify the number of graphics, you know, see how many videos there are, where they're at, do we have access to the source files, and that's kind of how our quotes [00:08:00] come together.

Angeline Evans: It sounds like you have to fully dissect, like, the English version in order to get all of those elements, because it's not really a one to one, so you have to consider all the little pieces that make up an eLearning course to translate them.

Larry Pilotto: Yeah, we really do, and we really Try our best up front to accurately scope out the job just so there's no surprises for anyone in the middle of a project, right?

Larry Pilotto: No one wants to hear, oh, you know, we, we missed, you know, 80 audio files and we need to charge you a little bit more, you know, that's going to affect the bottom line for the project and it's going to impact the timeline too. Um, so we really try to get that correct up front.

Nick Strozza: I don't know if I could chime in really quick, too, but, um, you know, a lot of times a client or potential client wants to have us quote from, like, a review link or a SCORM output, and it does take a little bit of education to make sure the [00:09:00] client understands why we need the source, because we like to see what's under the hood.

Nick Strozza: We scope out everything as if it's going to become a project, even if, you know, it's just a quote. Um, and so there are a lot of moving pieces and there's a lot of if then, right? If audio. What is, is entailed? If video, what are we doing? Are we doing voiceover or just captions or on screen text replacement?

Nick Strozza: Where, what is the video source file? Is it beyond Access that we'll need? Is it Adobe Premiere or After Effects? So there's a lot of, um, of work that we put in, um, up front, as Larry said, to avoid surprises and make sure that we're quoting something accurately.

Susan Cort: Nick, how important is it that people come to you at the beginning and they keep the translation in mind from the beginning?

Susan Cort: You know, the start, like before they even create the content versus it being an afterthought. How does that impact the process and the product?

Nick Strozza: That's a great question. It doesn't happen as often as it would be, because a lot of times translation does happen to be an afterthought. I've developed [00:10:00] English, and then, you know, You know, they onboard, a client onboards a bunch of new employees that need Spanish, no big deal, just translate to Spanish, and there's barely room on the screen for the English to fit.

Nick Strozza: Well, Spanish, German, that's going to be a challenge. Arabic's right to left. So, um, there's a lot of advantages when we could get involved early on, like if a client Um, is developing a course, and they're in the storyboard phase. We might be able to give advice. This slide, could you make it two slides? Can you minimize the audio syncing points?

Nick Strozza: Can you make sure, if there's a video, that there's enough room for the graphics to be localized? Um, or the on screen text to be replaced? So, yes, when we can get involved early on, it's definitely advantageous. If you know you are going to translate, or may translate at some point in time, keeping translation in mind early on is definitely advantageous.

Nick Strozza: So, um, it does not happen that often, just I think the nature of the beast. But when it can happen or when we definitely welcome that and we think it's going to be helpful for everybody involved.

Susan Cort: Well, it's just like with [00:11:00] accessibility. I mean, you don't think about that at the end. You need to think about that at the beginning as well.

Susan Cort: So, so whenever, whenever you do have that luxury to have the foresight to know that. You know, we are going to be translating this into a language, or we might be, that that can impact the design and make the end product and your work a lot better.

Nick Strozza: Agreed.

Angeline Evans: Yeah, it sounds like you brought up some of the challenges I was thinking of, you know, especially, you know, not having a one to one with screen text when you're designing eLearning.

Angeline Evans: It sounds like the best way to address that is just early on. Are there any unforeseen challenges the client faces? So the one who's seeking to translate that they did not. Does it have to do more with the localization of some, like the cultural differences that it can impact eLearning? Can you talk a little bit to that?

Nick Strozza: Sure. The way our model is structured intentionally is to work with in country linguists. So they are immersed in the culture, they're up to date with the common terminology. So I have a lot of family in Italy, for example, and there are now words. So there's, there's great potential. [00:12:00] Localization experts and translators in the U. S., right, but they haven't lived in the country for 10 years. There's actually a lot of languages you can consider them, they're preferential, but they're also organic. There's a lot of terminology now that doesn't even get translated. Um, they keep the words in English, so that's just like a cool thing they do.

Nick Strozza: So. Having a teams on the ground, um, on our side ensures that when they're looking at the content, they could point out things that might be culturally offensive, colors, numbers, when you, if you have the okay, that means zého, you're nothing in French, things like that come up, um, through the course of localization.

Nick Strozza: So definitely, cultural differences play a factor. That's why we work with in country teams. If a client is targeting French or Chinese or Spanish or Portuguese, my first question is, well, what's your target audience? Because depending on their answer, we'll use a different team. French for Canada versus French, um, Spanish, Latin America versus Europe [00:13:00] versus Mexico.

Nick Strozza: So all, you know, Chinese, mainland China, you know, Taiwan, Hong Kong, all that is, um, You know, it might seem like, oh, I just, I just need Chinese. Well, what is, you know, your market for that? Right? So depending on the answer, we would use a different group of linguists. The other thing in terms of a challenge, you know, upfront is, is just understanding, you know, again, why we would need the source files.

Nick Strozza: Um, that it's not just translation, it's localization. There's revision, proofreading, there's multiple sets of eyes that need to look at the content. And AI and machine translation is a big thing now. Why do I need both? You know, a company to do it when I can just run it through an AI engine, um, and, and machine translation, it, it's all getting better, you know, and it will get better.

Nick Strozza: Um, definitely will always require post editing and the type of content will, You know, the subject matter [00:14:00] will impact the efficiency of the machine translation engine or machine or AI voiceover recording. That's where we've dabbled in the most. Um, and, and it's getting better, like I said, and it's, it's good for some languages like Spanish or French, Asian languages, um, Arabic.

Nick Strozza: Um, it's just not there yet at all. And just the misconception of just, Hey, AI can do it is, is, is it the right fit? Can it? Should it? You know, that's kind of the question. Um, and then on our side, we like to work with our clients and maybe give different options and figure out what makes the most sense.

Angeline Evans: What are some ways that folks can make the eLearning localization process go more smoothly? So when they're handing things off or when they're developing their English version, what are some things they can consider and, and just remember to do next time?

Larry Pilotto: I think a couple things. Uh, uh, first would be to you know, make sure you have enough [00:15:00] room for the text to expand, depending on what target language you're going into.

Larry Pilotto: Um, the, the text is probably going to expand, you know, 25 to 30 percent. Okay. Um, so, you know, the, the, the, Having the extra room allows us to adjust elements on the screen without having a huge visual impact and making it look like we're trying to stuff, you know, 800 words into, you know, a 400 word space.

Larry Pilotto: Uh, having text and graphics is sometimes necessary, but it does, you know, increase, um, the, the effort to localize the content. So, you know, avoiding text and graphics would be a good step if you can.

Angeline Evans: So when you say text and graphics, you're referring to things like infographics, not necessarily, not like alt image text for accessibility. I just want to clarify for listeners.

Larry Pilotto: [00:16:00] Right, right. It would be text, it would be text that is, that you can't edit within Storyline or Captivate or Rise, whatever authoring tool you're using. Um, so it would be, you know, you'd have to open up Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever, you know, image editing program you're using to actually localize that text.

Larry Pilotto: It helps to avoid. You know, a lot of audio syncing, um, you know, that, that's kind of time consuming from, from the production side. So if you, you know, can maybe avoid, you know, not, not have something fly on the screen, you know, every other word that, you know, that's helpful. You know, mega slides are always a kind of a challenge.

Larry Pilotto: And by that, I mean a slide that has, you know, A hundred layers, that's five minutes long.

Angeline Evans: Yeah, so I was just going to ask for that. I bet you layers are probably something to avoid in this situation.

Larry Pilotto: Yeah, yeah. [00:17:00] Only because it gets a little confusing, I think, working in the editor, um, when you have something that big, um, just, just keeping track of everything on that timeline is a little time consuming.

Angeline Evans: Thank you. That's really helpful.

Nick Strozza: The other thing that we bump into a lot is When the audio doesn't match the script. So if there are closed caption files or notes and Storyline, um, but you know, during the course of a recording session, a English voiceover actor changes something or that something needed to be changed, but it wasn't updated in the notes.

Nick Strozza: If we don't catch that early on, we go through the whole process, right? Translation, revision, proofreading, we voiceover the old script or the inaccurate script, publish the course, QA it, and then later on find out, wait, That wasn't final. Um,

Angeline Evans: so version control,

Nick Strozza: version control or developer notes or stuff that shouldn't be translated.

Nick Strozza: Um, you know, that could affect the timeline, right? And the [00:18:00] cost re recording if you're doing it with professional talent. Um, so when a client can just do that final QA and make sure that the English source or whatever the source languages, um, you know, um, Whatever the script is, if there's voiceover for audio or, you know, video that matches, that's going to be a really, really big time saver and cost saver, potentially.

Angeline Evans: And to add to that, I mean, if I recall on a recent project, I think we had a client reviewer that was the, you know, the SME reviewer in the native language. And we did a glossary of terms up front, which was really helpful. Um, can you talk a little bit about that?

Nick Strozza: Yeah, absolutely. What we like to do and try to recommend our clients if they, if they, you know, we always ask, do you have someone that might want to be involved, that knows the language, a SME, um, you know, to review our translations, or better yet, develop what we call a glossary of translated terms.

Nick Strozza: Um, so a glossary development would be something where, and in this particular client project, They had a Japanese reseller of, um, their products. And what we did was [00:19:00] take the most commonly used words, words, not actual sentences, found throughout the copy of the courses, and then essentially put together a first run of translation on just these key terms.

Nick Strozza: Before we started translating anything else, and then this client's reviewer went ahead and reviewed the terms and yeah, Interpro got this right. No, instead of sneaker, I want shoe, for example, because languages are very, very preferential. You might ask five translators to translate the same sentence. You might get five translations back that are all accurate.

Nick Strozza: Kind of a running joke. So, um, in this case, we were able to kind of knock out those preferences up front early on in the process, which kind of lays like a great foundation to translate everything else. Um, doing a glossary development can be very, very advantageous, you know, if time allows. It's usually not in a very, you know, Big part of a project scope, it's more of getting the quality knocked out early on.

Nick Strozza: There's definitely nothing wrong with that. And, and, and it helps save a lot of, you know, hey, the course is [00:20:00] finalized. Well, I wish this word would have been used in translation versus this word. It's okay. So it really could, could help streamline things if you just take that little, little extra time up front.

Angeline Evans: Mm hmm. So, Larry, when you talked about the eLearning translation process, I understand that we're dissecting the English course and it's translating the elements and then essentially rebuilding it, like putting, putting the puzzle back together, so to speak, in storyline. Do you use any other tools? along the way, other than the tool, like the source files and the tools that the course came in to support the translation process.

Angeline Evans: Like, what, can you speak to a little bit of the translation tools you may use for efficiency or for the actual translation?

Larry Pilotto: In the course of production work, we could use an image editing program like Photoshop or Illustrator. Um, we might have to, you know, Adjust, uh, audio files, so we might use an audio editing program, um, like a, you know, [00:21:00] audition.

Larry Pilotto: And then there's video too, so we could use, you know, After Effects or Premiere, um, to actually edit and localize the on screen text that's found within the video that's playing in the course. We might need to open a closed captioning file in Notepad to, you know, adjust the timing of it for you before we bring it in too.

Nick Strozza: And then from a translation standpoint, um, our translators don't work within Storyline to like freehand translate or whatever the platform is. So we always prepare the text in a way where our translators use, uh, what we call a translation memory, um, technology. It's a professional tool. for a professional translator to do translation.

Nick Strozza: Think of it as a two column screen. It's not machine translation or AI. It's been around for a long time. We've been using it for a long time. But think of it like a two column screen, English on the left, Spanish on the right. We're going to translate phrases into the language, and then we'll do revision and proofreading.

Nick Strozza: When [00:22:00] you have an update to the course or a similar project, whatever it might be, we have now built what we call a translation memory. So, you know, think of it as a database of translated terms per client per language. So even if a client has similar content, they might want the terms translated in a different way, um, consistently for that language pair.

Nick Strozza: So it's our client's property. But when we have an update, it's Any new English or source content, we run it against that client's translation memory, or TM, and that will show us how we've translated terms before, and over time, the translators aren't starting from scratch. So that could, and there could be things we don't even have to charge for if they've been fully translated before.

Nick Strozza: So, you know, many times we'll compete with an organization that They have some in house linguist or an overseas reseller that wants to do the translation. Well, they might not remember how they translated a certain term, you know, a couple of months before, a year before, and they're starting from scratch every single [00:23:00] time.

Nick Strozza: So in our process, we use this technology, um, platform to ensure that we're keeping the terminology consistent and it helps with cost savings for repetitive materials. And, um, Um, just ensures the quality and consistency throughout all messaging. So this is a kind of a behind the scenes extra value add that in theory, any professional localization company should be using some kind of translation memory.

Nick Strozza: Um, can't speak to that, but I know for sure in ours, our process, it's our client's property, it's their terminology, and it's definitely very advantageous.

Angeline Evans: You had spoken a little bit about AI earlier. I'd love to hear what other emerging trends you see in the field of translation.

Nick Strozza: I mean, one thing that we're seeing more and more, um, is the, the variety of the types of things that are being translated.

Nick Strozza: So, for example, outside of, you know, just eLearning courses. Clients are asking us to translate, you know, content on their WordPress CMS. They're [00:24:00] asking us to localize text messaging, you know, messages that go out to like caregivers that speak the foreign language. There's been a very big shift in what we like to call, you know, language Access or language equity, where, you know, if you, you talked to us 10, 15 years ago, our mission statement, our trade show booth would say, you know, we're here to help you increase your international sales and your ROI for your global audience.

Nick Strozza: And now, you know, global is more local. It's now, not everybody speaks English, so we're doing a lot of translation of, you know, eLearning courses and content for native speakers of other languages that reside in the USA. So that's a really big trend, I would say, in general, affecting eLearning, accessibility, DEI.

Nick Strozza: Those are all, you know, very, very important things that, um, you know, that we feel we play a big role in making sure that messaging is correct. Additionally, we're seeing some emerging trends in the translation memory technology. So for example, we, our translators, you [00:25:00] know, primarily use a tool called Trados.

Nick Strozza: Well, now there's other types of tools. Um, for example, there's a tool called Phrase or XTM where our translators, we don't even manage the translation memory. It's all done in this cloud based tool where. Our clients, you know, in theory could also use in house translators, and we're able to use the same terminology or multiple resources for, like, larger companies that maybe they need to have multiple vendors.

Nick Strozza: Languages are very, very preferential. There's, I think, over, like, 14 ways to say the word popcorn in Spanish, right? So it needs to be very, very, um, to us it's important that the consistency of the messaging and the wording, either throughout a document or a course, remains intact. Um, so these are the big emerging trends.

Nick Strozza: Um, kind of playing into the AI, there's text to speech voiceover recording. It's really not great. Um, the, the voiceover recording of, um, with AI is where we think the best value at is, as many people know, [00:26:00] voiceover recording, even for English, you know, in the studio, it, it's not great. It's the best quality, but it's very expensive and time consuming.

Nick Strozza: If you have to do a re record, well, now you've got to book the studio talent. Oh, wait, now they're not available for a week. They're in the Bahamas, you know, so now you've got to wait if you want the same voice. Or they might not be doing that anymore in two years when you want to update part of the course.

Susan Cort: I think at least at this point with the, the AI translation tools, I mean, certainly there can be some benefits there, but I think what that's missing is what you know, organizations like yours can bring to the table. And that's a really deep understanding of what the language really means, you know, um, and understanding that this is going to be meaningful and, and on point with the learners, you know, regardless of where they're based.

Susan Cort: So that's, that's the only, I think, would you agree that that's sort of the, one of the caveats with using some of the AI translation tool at this point.

Nick Strozza: And it could be a fit for some. Some things, but do you really want your HR compliance onboarding training to be offensive possibly, or a mistranslation?

Nick Strozza: It looks [00:27:00] comical, you know, these are professional companies. So that's why I'm. I'm personally not, at this point in time, you know, in the year 2024, I'm not too concerned when it comes to eLearning and training and development and HR content being a good fit for machine translation or AI. Um, I think, you know, if it's like a global e commerce website with a lot of products or, you know, technical manuals with a lot of the same dry terminology, that might be a fit, but, you know, your company's, you know, Core values, overview, or the history of this winery, whatever it is, like you, do you really want that, you know, to be mistranslated?

Nick Strozza: Because again, you, stuff could be offensive. Stuff that's poorly, professionally human translated without context could be offensive. Like we have, and a lot of times we, you know, we, we just happen to don't. Obtain a client because they had a bad experience somewhere else. I remember a story, um, there's a safety nonprofit organization and I went to their office and we had one of our PMs [00:28:00] that spoke Spanish was reading, you know, their, their safety manual, first aid training and the translation, um, in Spanish, she was laughing.

Nick Strozza: I'm like, why are you laughing? Well, it was a picture of someone in an office, like hanging over someone on the floor. And the English source was, you know, kind of like what you, what you should do if you have someone, a coworker, um, having an attack in the office, um, when a coworker, you know, has, um, medical issue, emergency and the translation in Spanish, like, yeah, so what's this about?

Nick Strozza: She's like, well, it says, um, attack of the office worker from the other office workers. Okay. Yeah. We've had a client that, you know, that, uh, in German, the, the translation of their, like. Pumps or whatever was like, you know, like air pumps, like steam pumps. And then the translation was like women's pumps, like shoes.

Nick Strozza: So it's like, you know, so there's a lot of funny stories out there. Um, they could be funny, but they're also, you know, if you work there, not that funny. So I think you need to be [00:29:00] careful.

Angeline Evans: Absolutely. And when it comes to training content, you. could completely, you know, jumble the training message and you're actually no longer educating someone because you're, you know.

Nick Strozza: Absolutely.

Angeline Evans: The terms aren't there.

Susan Cort: And it also would say to the learners that your organization didn't care enough to get it right, you know, which is not the message you want to send. Well, Larry and Nick, as we wrap things up today, what kind of advice would you give to people who are creating custom eLearning and thinking about translation? Just kind of put a little bow on it for us so that people can can leave with some takeaways.

Nick Strozza: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that just, um. Kind of working with the potential translation partner or resource up front when possible, you know, don't consider it an afterthought, you know, try to make sure your source versions are available and accurate and clean and just don't Kind of be mindful of the localization component of the content, so just like something that might make sense in [00:30:00] English, like, um, something as easy as pie or recipe for success.

Nick Strozza: Well, that doesn't translate. You know, if you translate those words, you know, sometimes you have to really adapt the messaging and just keep that in mind. Keep keep that in mind early on, because that will help long term. Just making sure that you. You know, everything's kind of well thought out, but work with whoever you're going to be working with, and iron out all those details early on.

Larry Pilotto: That's a great suggestion, and that's actually the first thing that came to my mind, too, is that before you actually start the project, sit down with the people that you're going to actually be working with, let them look at the source material, give them a chance to review it, sit down and ask them, you know, what questions they have, what If there's any areas for improvement, you know, culturally or otherwise, it could be made and start from there because it will really, having all those questions answered up front, you know, sets everybody's expectations [00:31:00] and helps everything run a lot smoother.

Susan Cort: Well, thank you both for joining us today. Great advice, and we're sure our listeners are on a better path now as they move forward with their translation needs.

Susan Cort: Yes.

Angeline Evans: Thank you both so much for joining.

Larry Pilotto: Thank you so much for having us.

Nick Strozza: Merci. Gracias. Gracias.

Susan Cort: Gracias para tu ayuda.

Nick Strozza: And there we go.

Susan Cort: Angeline, that was some great advice from Nick and Larry to help people make sure that everybody really has the same learning experience regardless of the language they speak. 

Angeline Evans: I agree, Susan. It was so helpful to hear the tips and insights from Nick and Larry today. And you know, I'm not bilingual, so as we have translated more and more eLearning and training content at d'Vinci, I've always felt that I was a little behind in fully understanding the level of work that actually goes into this process.

Angeline Evans: So I'd have to say my biggest takeaways are, One, translation is a critical component when it comes to developing accessible and inclusive [00:32:00] training content. So don't overlook it or skip it in your process. Two, do your best to design with translation in the future in mind. It makes a big difference, especially with eLearning.

Angeline Evans: So if you plan ahead and you don't clutter screens with too much text or use text as imagery, as Nick mentioned, or have too many layers, this is going to ease the process. And lastly, stay organized. So most of us are going to work with the translation vendor. So having your assets organized and up to date is going to save you a ton of time and headache during that handoff process.

Susan Cort: That's great advice. Thanks, Angeline.

Angeline Evans: Thanks, Susan.

Susan Cort: And special thanks to our guests, Nick Strozza and Larry Pilotto from Interpro Translation Solutions. If you have an idea for a topic or guest, please drop us a note at poweredbylearningatdvinci. com. And don't forget to subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.