eLearning Localization: The 4-Step Process for Easy L&D Translations

Translations are a key factor in scaling any L&D program–and a common struggle. It’s hard enough creating one learning path or a handful of specific courses, let alone building each one three, five, or ten times. 

But unless you have a homogenous workforce, in the same country with the same native language, you probably need to localize. And as the business grows into new geographies, there’s simply no avoiding it. 

The good news: it doesn’t have to be a chore. In fact, there are now simple and straightforward ways to localize lessons—and whole learning paths—without undue effort. 

We’ll show you exactly how to do it shortly. But first, a quick definition. 

What is eLearning localization? 

eLearning localization adapts your company’s learning and development courses, materials, and reporting to fit your team’s diverse languages and cultures. Done well, it provides the same quality of training courses and information to all staff, no matter what country or language they operate in. 

Localization goes beyond simply translating the words in a specific course. Where appropriate, it also adjusts the images, videos, tone of voice, currencies, and other crucial elements that help training make sense for each learner. 

Localization vs translation

This distinction deserves explanation. Most people think only of translating corporate learning material. But localization is generally more robust and provides a more complete learning experience. 

• Translation converts the specific words and phrases on a page into another language. Good translations bring nuance and tact to the job, but it’s largely a direct 1:1 swap.
• Localization changes contexts, references, and further reading where appropriate. It links out to materials specifically chosen for the new language; it uses metaphors and idioms that the audience will inherently understand.

In this guide, we’ll use both terms and will specify where the distinction is important. But where L&Ds can strive for true localization over translation, the outcomes will likely be better.

Key advantages of localizing eLearning courses & materials

There are countless benefits to localizing courses. Most notably, everyone can learn and understand important concepts in their native language. 

But here are a few good benefits you may not have considered. 

Drives consistent results

While you want employees to take initiative and apply lessons to their everyday work, too much interpretation can be an issue. Especially for technical or legal subjects, you want every learner to understand and take away precise lessons and rules of thumb. 

When learning isn’t localized, employees are asked to bridge the gap between their native language and that of the lessons. While they might easily understand 85% of the material (for instance), they may make false equivalencies between terms. 

Pinpoint localization takes the guesswork away for team members, and ensures everyone takes the same conclusions from training sessions. 

Enables contextual learning

Learning is always influenced by context. A good L&D program will deliver courses in the right formats and at the appropriate times to best reach learners. But the material itself also needs to meet its audience’s specific context. 

You wouldn’t ask your millennial or Gen Z workers to prepare a fax in an L&D exercise—you may not even ask them to leave a voicemail. These once-ubiquitous corporate tools barely exist today. Similarly, learners from other cultures and backgrounds may not fully understand what seem like simple examples to many. 

Localization lets your authors adapt examples and tasks to match local audiences. Simple examples include: 

• Adjusting currencies. Is 50 euros a lot or a little to learners in Brazil, Japan, or India?
• Localizing modes of transport. “An underground ticket” makes sense in London, but not in Sydney or Seattle. To “Uber” somewhere is a verb in North America and much of Europe, but not in most of Asia or Africa. 
• Using local laws and rules. GDPR is a huge topic in Europe, but not in the U.S. And whereas American employees might care about their “401(k)” or “IRA,” other regimes apply elsewhere. 

Lowers costs

As we’ll see, localizing learning content can easily be done in house with your existing subject-matter experts. It doesn’t have to take huge amounts of time, and you don’t need an external translation service or L&D consultants in each language. 

The common alternative is purchasing whole content libraries or training courses in each language. And those costs can quickly add up.  

Improves employee satisfaction and retention

55% of HR professionals say that training is the most important investment they can make in employee experience. And 26% believe that a lack of learning opportunities is the number one cause of employee turnover. 

Learning programs keep employees happy and high performing for longer. But only if they’re easily accessible and engaging to everyone. 

Localizing courses is a necessary step to ensure that they nurture and develop your whole team—not just the employees at head office. 

Keep you compliant locally

Suppose you require anti-money laundering training for your whole workforce. The broad messages and best practices will be the same across the board, but the specific regulations and response steps may differ from country to country. So too will the precise language you use to refer to “politically-exposed people” or the “Money Laundering Reporting Officer” in your company. 

Localization lets you build the overall course to suit everyone, then insert the precise legal terminology you need in each jurisdiction. And translate the course into each language, obviously.

How to localize eLearning in your company

Localizing your corporate learning and development is largely a matter of tooling. With the right LMS or LXP software in place, localization is relatively fast and straightforward. 

Which means you need to choose the right learning software. We’ll see what localization should look like next. But first, there are two deal-breaker questions to ask a prospective provider.

1. How many languages do you need?

The obvious first question to ask of your LMS platform is: how many languages does it support? If your platform of choice can easily localize content into every language you need, that’s what matters. 

But we can go further, and there are a few extra considerations: 

• Does the platform regularly add new languages, or has it supported the same handful since inception? An eLearning tool that constantly iterates and updates languages is more likely to meet any future needs you have.
• Is there a limit to the number of translations you can have, or does it become prohibitively expensive to add new languages?

As a benchmark, 360Learning supports more than 60 languages, and that number will only keep growing. 

2. What do you need to localize? 

Obviously you want to localize specific training material. Localization happens at many different levels within an LMS platform. 

Does your LMS or eLearning platform make it easy to translate courses, and for users to switch between languages? 

Here are some of the sections of an LMS that can be localized: 

• Individual lessons or courses. Each piece of training material should be localizable on its own.
• Learning paths. Where courses are grouped or themed, you need to be able to localize the entire learning path. This includes its name, description, goals, reminders, and obviously the individual session titles.
• The platform itself. LMS users should be able to change the platform language overall, including its settings, notifications, and other daily interactions. 
• Forums and conversations. Here’s where a little AI can really help. Artificial intelligence can automatically localize forum messages into a learner’s chosen language. That way, if one employee asks a key question or makes an important observation, everyone benefits. 

How localization works in 360Learning

Translating large amounts of learning material can be daunting. But it can actually be  (relatively) quick and pain free.

To illustrate, let’s see the process in 360Learning. Here’s the process to assign a whole new learning path, including the individual training sessions.

1. Declare a language need. An administrator or author assigns the learning path for localization. Nothing is shared with learners at this stage, and translators can work on their sections in private.
2. Assign translators. Local experts can be assigned to the specific courses and subjects they’re needed on. Which means not only can you give a sales course to an experienced salesperson, or a compliance training to a legal expert, but you can easily share the work and reduce each individual’s burden.
   
   As always, 360Learning is designed for collaborative learning. Which means it isn’t one person’s job to localize everything for a given language or location.
3. Localize the content. Translators receive an email with a direct link to the specific course they need to work on. They simply update the text, images, videos, and links within their version of the course, so the overall concept and structure remain the same. 
   
   And thanks to our AI translation tools, this step can now be automated! More on this shortly.
   
   Note: Translators cannot edit or erase any of the original course (unless they are also the original author).
4. Share with learners. When you choose to enable the new language with learners, it becomes available to all who use that language.
   
   Because not all courses will be localized (in most cases), learners will have a chosen language and a default language (often English). If the course is available in their chosen language, that’s what they’ll see. Otherwise, they’ll get the default version.
   
   Learners can change the language of their course—or the whole platform—any time. Assuming, of course, their chosen language is available. 

And that’s basically it! The process is essentially the same to translate tags, settings, and anything else you need within the platform.

How AI makes one-click translations a reality

There’s obviously a labor burden to localizing courses at scale. In the past, L&D teams were hesitant to commit the time and energy required to do so. And you had to beg subject-matter experts from other teams to lend their expertise. 

But the lift is now so much lighter. 360Learning’s AI translations provide contextual, natural translations for any module, caption, or entire course, in a single click. Naturally, you can then tweak the localized version to suit your preferences. But all the hard work is done, and you save hours building out course content for teams. 

This lets you: 

• Translate entire courses instantly into over 60 languages
• Deliver multilingual training at the speed your business moves
• Maintain agility without sacrificing learner experience
• Provide consistent, equal learning journeys, without advantaging one location over another 

Here’s a short demo of these incredible, instant AI translations in action:

Globalize your learning programs with 360Learning

The best learning platforms take localization from an administrative nightmare to a breeze for L&D teams. 360Learning is one of the few that makes truly global, scalable learning a reality for companies. 

Here’s what sets us apart:

• Over 60 languages are supported in a simple, intuitive translation interface.
• Reports, statistics, and key metrics are available at the language or country level, by team or manager, and globally. 
• Adaptive language automatically delivers content in each learner’s default vocabulary. 
• Easy switching lets learners toggle between available languages, even from mobile devices.
• Forum messages are also translated automatically, so team members can collaborate and learn from one another easily.

Most importantly, translating is fast, easy, and supercharged by AI tools. Which takes so much of the stress and hassle from your local leaders and subject-matter experts. 

There are no bottlenecks, just smart solutions for global teams. 

See how easy globalizing corporate learning can be