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Required InDesign Translation Skills

January 4, 2019

How many different skills are required to complete an InDesign translation project? Setting aside supporting skills (e.g., accounting, project management, marketing, et. al.), there are essentially two skill sets required for the actual project work. The first category is the language skills required for translation and proofreading. The second skill category is formatting within InDesign. […]

Storyline Translation Project Variables

January 2, 2019

Note: This blog is being written while listening to The Bill Evans Trio’s classic jazz album Waltz for Debby. Articulate Storyline translation projects typically vary significantly in their complexity. In our experience virtually no two Storyline translation projects are the same in scope or in project skill requirements. Exporting the text from Storyline and determining […]

Required InDesign Translation Skills

January 4, 2019

Storyline Translation Project Variables

January 2, 2019

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Required InDesign Translation Skills

January 4, 2019

Sometimes clients envision that translation of InDesign documents occurs within the actual InDesign environment. It might seem that translators can open an InDesign document up in the application environment, and change the source language text into the target language text, while keeping the existing formatting intact. However, that’s not quite the approach to a professional InDesign translation project.

First in InDesign translation projects all text for translation comes out of InDesign in order to allow translators to work more effectively using modern translation tools. These tools are not low quality machine translation. Instead translation tools allow human translators to more easily focus on just language independent of formatting. Source and target text segments are aligned side by side for direct comparison. Translation tools also allow for detection of text repetition within the body of a project. Detection of repetition benefits clients by lowering translation costs (i.e., the exact same source text needn’t be translated more than once).

Once translation and proofreading by a second translator is complete the translated text is ready for placement back into the InDesign file. Skilled InDesign technicians are assigned to this task. Formatting adjustments are sometimes necessary since some languages require more space than others to express equivalent meaning.

Successful InDesign translation projects are supported by assigning ideally suited specialist personnel to each piece of the project.

Storyline Translation Project Variables

January 2, 2019

Note: This blog is being written while listening to The Bill Evans Trio’s classic jazz album Waltz for Debby.

Articulate Storyline translation projects typically vary significantly in their complexity. In our experience virtually no two Storyline translation projects are the same in scope or in project skill requirements.

Exporting the text from Storyline and determining the word count of the course’s basic slide text is straightforward. Frequently however, Storyline translation projects have more to consider. A few things we’ve learned to check for are listed below.

Embedded graphics text. Sometimes graphical elements have text associated with them that the Storyline export doesn’t include. Graphics text that’s appropriate for translation must be identified separately and considered as part of the project.
Audio narration. Narration or other spoken audio content is another candidate for translation (via a transcript) and then producing a professional voiceover in the target language(s). Complexity here is added as a result of the need to produce a new voiceover. Sometimes clients have an existing script for spoken audio content. When they don’t then the audio content needs to be transcribed (listened to and written down as it’s spoken prior to translation). The new audio must also be integrated into the final Storyline project.
Videos with spoken audio. Videos are sometimes part of a course. If there’s spoken audio in the videos then translation/localization can occur through either adding subtitles in the target language or dubbing new voiceovers. We generally price both options for clients and let them decide. Clients on occasion might also decide to leave videos untranslated.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Required InDesign Translation Skills

Storyline Translation Project Variables

Required InDesign Translation Skills

Storyline Translation Project Variables

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Required InDesign Translation Skills

Storyline Translation Project Variables

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