How To Create Multilingual ELearning Content That Engages
Media is changing the landscape of marketing, digital advertising, and eLearning. And those who create localized multimedia channels to reach virtual, local audiences are reaping the rewards.
Improve Interaction And Motivate Learners
During the past decade, the internet has grown by leaps and bounds. Thanks to this digital evolution, we now have endless resources for all forms of digital content, such as videos, social media platforms, and games. Content creators are quickly becoming oversaturated with digital content across the globe. In these difficult times, they must make sure their content is entertaining, informative, and educational. If the content doesn’t meet these criteria, then it will struggle to capture the audience’s attention.
A global brand, on the other hand, may need to take another step when creating multimedia content. As a marketer, it is important to focus on how to leverage and localize your content. Even if your content is engaging, it will lose its meaning if it is not translated or localized for your desired markets.
Video Content Dominates the World
Gen Z and younger generations expect more than just pictures and words when seeking engaging digital content. Static content does not engage the younger generations.
Social media, smartphones, and apps like TikTok have made us crave to be gratified instantly, and short, snappy videos can do just that. Videos are generally the source of information that most users prefer, which could explain why they spend an average of 3.7 hours using their smartphones and other devices. With over 500 million active users watching videos on Facebook every day, it becomes clear how effective video content can be when used properly.
Growing Multilingual eLearning Content
Our attention should not only be focused on video content, but we should also pay attention to the increasing demand for eLearning content as well. Since the global pandemic, the need for face-to-face training has decreased, and remote learning has definitely increased.
Analysts predict that the eLearning market will exceed $370 billion by 2026. However, this success cannot be attributed solely to a market that was born out of nothing. Even though creating branded video content for your social media feed can be quite easy, creating effective virtual training content may be more challenging.
Designing Engaging eLearning Content
We must think beyond just text and pictures when creating effective eLearning content, as these will not engage the remote learner. Think about how you can utilize smart strategies to ensure your eLearning content motivates your learners and increases their interactions and satisfaction with it.
Consider creating short, digestible, and informative videos that feature your team members or experts in your chosen field as a first step. As previously mentioned, videos are an excellent way to engage a digital audience. We suggest that long videos should be divided into smaller chunks, with modules for each section. We don’t advise making a video that is two hours long since it can be extremely daunting and put off users.
Gamification refers to the use of gaming formats in eLearning programs to increase participation and engagement. Games need not be complicated to be effective. Create an online quiz to motivate employees and reward them with badges and rewards, multiplayer games, guided tours, and more.
Why Localizing eLearning Content is Important
Using the same example as our last point, users now demand localized and seamlessly translated multimedia content. According to research, 65% of users prefer content in the language of their choice, which is no surprise.
In order to create smooth localized eLearning content that can engage a global audience, we have outlined six ways to help you overcome the challenges of translating and localizing your content.
- Language Expansion Should Be Monitored
Most languages are roughly longer than English, and local languages such as Hindi can take up more space on a page than English. Therefore, if your original source is written or spoken in English, you need to consider that this text and audio will be expanded when translated.
We need to take into account a translation’s length when we integrate text boxes, graphics, or audio.
- Universal Content Is Important
Create content that is relevant to all your target audiences so that you do not need to source culturally specific content. This will save you time and money.
3.First, all content must be finalized
The process of localization will not run smoothly unless you provide clean, finalized content. Ensuring you have completed source files can be time- and money-saving.
During the initial stage, consider how the text might expand, how subtitles may fit, whether motion graphics can be easily edited, and whether a voice-over can be easily synced with the source material, etc.
4. Invest time in voice-over language expansion
When recording source audio, you should give yourself a little bit of extra time to expand the voice-over language. Language expansion can be achieved by using slower speaking paces or long pauses. These methods allow you to have audio space in your video and to accommodate the audio of languages that are longer than your primary language.
5. Timing Is Important For Audio Scripts
You should let your translator know about these translation timings so that they can know how much time is available for localizing your audio clips. Voice artists can speed up their speaking pace to ensure their speech is as long as the translation. To extend the length of a video, you can extend static scenes or integrate additional video edits.
6. Consider graphics, animations, and subtitles carefully
It’s important to consider these details at the content development stage, for example, because some fonts are too small to be readable in some languages, and some graphics or photographs are either irrelevant or potentially offensive in certain cultures.
Conclusion
As technology continues to evolve, it is imperative that you ensure your online content is both educational and entertaining. Otherwise, it may never be seen. If you are a part of a global brand, leveraging and localizing multimedia content will be paramount. To ensure your users enjoy a seamless, localized experience, you need to understand the complex processes before you begin translating and localizing your content.