We’ve seen what e-learning localization is in this article, but in case you missed that, let’s recap the main points:
- Localizing e-learning material means adapting it to your audience’s culture and way of life, so as to make it feel familiar to them.
- The goal of e-learning localization is to make learners as mentally comfortable as possible while studying, so that they can focus on what they need to learn. Localized courses help students learn more quickly and with greater depth.
- For you, the benefits of localizing your e-learning material are manifold: you save time; you show respect and improve communication with foreign customers, partners and employees; and you can even avoid potential lawsuits caused by poor performance due to faulty instructions.
- Translation is one element of localization, but there are several others. Besides written and spoken words, you can and should localize measurements, date and time formats, colours, content direction, images with geographical or cultural implications, etc.
Should I spend money on external localization?
To answer this question, let’s take up the same example from our previous article: your French company is offering e-learning services to the employees of your Burmese branch.
Your e-learning course includes:
- text
- audio
- video and animation
- images
What do you do? Do you hire and manage several Burmese professionals from different areas – translators, dubbers and subtitlers, graphic designers and language management system specialists?
You can of course do that, but it’s easy to see that will be a lot of work for you. You will have to assemble and manage a team whom you have not worked with before, who have not worked with each other either, and who are located in different time zones.
With this solution, transaction costs will probably be high.
The other option is to work with an external provider of translation services – a translation company like us, who can deliver the whole package of localization services to you.
Because Upwords is not only a translation agency, we don’t just refer you to a random translation professional and leave you to deal with them. Instead, we offer you integrated services by professionals we already know: translation, cultural adaptation, voiceover, dubbing and subtitles, digital image publishing and video/animation creation.
You will have a dedicated project manager, who will plan, oversee and integrate the work of all these professionals, and be your point of contact with us.
What’s more, we work with digital tools that ensure we don’t need to do all over again what you’ve already done – like formatting text, designing screens, and coding.
Investing in external e-learning localization may seem at first like an unnecessary expense. But when you think it will save you a lot of headache, effort and time, and help you create high-quality e-learning content in other languages – then you see that it’s actually a truly profitable investment.
