The trend of eLearning localization is growing massively with time. Particularly during the pandemic, online learning proved to be very useful. The online education became more popular and people bound in homes started taking online courses of their interests to make the best use of available time.
Considering the wide popularity of eLearning, it would be a great idea to target more than one market. You can tap into multiple markets by localizing your course. Presenting your course in multiple languages will offer numerous benefits. With e-learning localization, you can reach a wider audience and make your course more effective.
Why You Need eLearning Localization
Research has revealed that people learn more effectively if they are communicated in their native language. eLearning localization offers numerous benefits. By preparing your online learning programs for multicultural audiences, you can make it more effective. The integration of socio-cultural aspects in addition to language translation leaves a positive impact on the audience and adds to your credibility.
To conduct your eLearning module effectively, you need to consider all technical and functional aspects so that the learners get the same experience that they enjoy in the source language course. Considering the benefits, it’s worth a try to localize your e-learning programs, but it is not that easy.
eLearning localization is different from website localization and marketing collateral. It needs a comprehensive process.
Here is a quick eLearning localization testing checklist to help you cover all important aspects. Take a look and make sure you don’t miss out on any of these points to ensure the seamless localization of your online course.
Content Accuracy – eLearning
While testing your e-learning localization, you need to divide it into two parts.
- Linguistic
- Functional and technical
To make sure that your eLearning course is flawless, both these parts need special attention. In addition to the accuracy of the content of the module, the functionality should also be free from errors. Therefore, it’s better to get them checked by specialized personnel.
Why do you need two separate teams for testing content and functionality? Because, the technical and functional team that is responsible for integrating the content on the internet are not linguists, but they are engineers. They are not native to the content language, so their focus is on the technical part instead of content accuracy.
There is a probability that while integrating the content, some part of the content is removed or missed. So it is recommended to have two separate teams. One to ensure the accuracy of the content, and the other to check the technical aspects.
- Make sure the designated team for content review goes through all parts of the content, proofread it, and make changes if needed.
- The personnel responsible for reviewing technical aspects must check each and every functionality to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Layout and Format
In addition to content and functionality, you need to check the look and feel of the localized version of your e-learning program. Layout and format might change a bit while translating content from source to target language.
The localized content should be verified with the source-language content so that the layout and format can be matched. Is your content overlapped or curtailed? Are spacing, line breaks, fonts, and margins according to the source? The functional and technical team can check this part and maintain consistency in style and fonts throughout the content.
Display of Proper Characters
The display of characters in every language is different. Corrupted letters in certain languages appear as empty boxes and question marks. In some languages like Hebrew, Thai, and Arabic, it is very difficult to check corrupted letters if you are not competent in linguistics. For the proper display of characters, the linguistic team plays its part. Check the content display in the localized version to ensure that everything is displayed properly.
Right to Left Languages
Right to left languages like Arabic and Hebrew are very difficult to deal with. The content and the graphics are inverted in the course, and it seems the translated course is the mirror image of the source content. All these right to left languages should be tackled very carefully to make sure that content is inverted correctly.
Links
You need to make sure that links provided in the course are from the right location because links can be from an external source or embedded in local documents. All links should be localized and tested separately. Remember to verify all the links with the source content.
Popup Accuracy
The content in the popup should appear at the correct time so you need to test it with all possibilities, and popup content should be properly localized. This factor is often overlooked while testing, make sure you check it in the final testing.
 Functional Testing – elearning
While conducting functional testing, you need to check each and everything, especially actions and dialogue boxes. You need to verify the localized content with the source to check functionality. There is no need to do unit testing as we do in software testing. Usually, the functional and technical teams check the functionality while checking the format and layout.
 Media Testing
Media testing is very important in conducting your eLearning module successfully. Along with written text, the localization of audio and visual content is also important. You need to make sure that your audio and video clips are accurately integrated and synchronized with text and visuals. If there is any audio in the content, it should be accurately localized. Check if your videos and audios are correctly dubbed and subtitled according to your e-learning project requirements. All these linguistic checks should be done by a linguistic team.
Wrapping it Up
Once you have localized your eLearning course, now is the time to do thorough testing You need to pay special attention to detail and take several aspects into account. For your help, all the major factors are discussed here. Check all the points mentioned above to ensure a seamless localization of your e-learning program.