Build that e-learning Babel Tower

Numerous instructional designers talk about their dilemmas when creating e-learning courses. One common option is to use off-the-shelf tools such as MS Office to create their e-learning content. However, this often leads to having to struggle to get this content translated into other languages.

This issue was recently addressed in the latest Reusability 2.0 webinar “Simplifying Compliance Training”. The webinar was mostly centered on knowledge management for compliance training. One of the questions posed to the panelists was how language translation related to content delivery and control. Mark Hellinger, President and CEO of Xyleme, answered:

“The process of creating content using a technology like XML (eXtensive Markup Language) allows you to separate the content from the presentation. And if you move away from creating media that has embedded text on images or if you move away from creating flash where all the text is embedded in the flash, you can use techniques with which, from a design point of view, you separate the things that are appearing on an image or in a flash animation from the actual media itself, and this can significantly impact your language translation cost.”

According to Mark Hellinger, one of Xyleme’s clients was explaining that when they did an analysis of their total cost of translation, the two biggest factors that came up had to do with media containing embedded text and lack of reusable content. The fact that media contained embedded text - and even though there were language translation automation tools and processes – resulted in a manual workaround process contributing to about 20% of the overall cost to translate to a second language of what was in the master language. And then the second factor was just reusable content. They found that people were rewriting the same steps in a procedure or rewriting the same concepts over and over again even though these existed elsewhere in the organization.

So if you move to a model where you structure your content so that it can be repurposed and reused and you move to a model where you separate the content from the presentation, you can drive you language translation cost down by over 50%.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 2:48 am by Dawn and is filed under Instructional design for single source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.