How Much Time Is Required for Storyline Ecourse Translation
How much time is required to translate an ecourse authored in Articulate Storyline? The answer obviously depends on the scope of the course and its complexity. For our company most Storyline translation projects we’ve performed have taken from one to four weeks from start to finish.
Some project tasks can be performed in parallel, saving time. Others can only be performed after prerequisite steps have completed. For example the recording of voiceovers for an audio narration needs to wait until translation of a script is complete. If a script is not available then transcription needs to precede translation.
Translation of standard slide text is typically the most straightforward aspect of Storyline translation projects to estimate time requirements for. Professional translators normally average in the 2500 to 3000 words per day range for translation. Following translation time must also be allowed for proofreading of the translated text as a quality assurance measure. Once the word count for a project is known then translation schedules can be established.
Integration of the translated text within Storyline can take a day, or several days for larger courses with more slides. Storyline courses that we see often have additional elements associated with them that take more time to address. These can include items such as:
- Videos that appear during the course. If a video has spoken audio included in it, clients must decide whether they want the video to remain in its original form untranslated, or whether sub-titles are added, or new target language audio is dubbed into the video. In our experience most video services need from several days to a week for attention. Text must first be translated, then either sub-titles or voiceovers are applied.
- Audio narration throughout the length of a course is another element. When narration is included in a project the script in most cases is translated, a target language voiceover prepared, and then integration within the course can occur. For many courses that we see this piece of the process can take an average of a week depending on the length of the course.
- A less time intensive step but still necessary is translation of text that’s part of graphics and is not included in Storyline’s text export function. For graphics text the text is translated and then the graphics are recreated for inclusion in the translated course.
