Elearning International Translation
18th April 2018
How a small London-based business suddenly found itself having to go global and the challenges around it.
With the consistent popularity of our Diversity and Equality courses and our Unconscious Bias training, it was only a matter of time before interest arrived from outside the UK.
At Marshall Elearning, we have previously provided our Unconscious Bias course to English-speaking overseas customers – such as the Tasmanian Department of Finance and Treasury in Australia.
But now, with continued expansion, we have tackled the challenge of adapting our ever-popular Unconscious Bias offering for a non-english-speaking clientele, so our courses can be launched simultaneously by organisations with offices around the globe.
Meeting the challenge of international translation
It has become increasingly necessary to look towards translating our courses to better cater to our overseas customers. We approached this challenge by undertaking commissions for the translation of our most popular courses.
With completed projects including the translation of a bespoke course for Pictet (translated into Japanese and French) and another bespoke course for Prudential, translated into various languages including Thai, Traditional Chinese, and Vietnamese, to name a few.
However, our biggest translation project came from Anixter, with the commissioning an English and Latin American Spanish version of our Unconscious Bias course.
With this new endeavour of translating courses, our central challenge was that the languages we had been commissioned to convert the courses into were ones not covered within the company.
We had to ensure the quality of the translated courses matched the high watermark of the Marshall E-Learning offering and had accurate translations, but checking this was difficult given no-one in our organisation spoke the languages commissioned.
Since we had no way to check internally whether the translations would be of the required quality, the only way we could overcome this challenge was to ensure we selected the right translation team, and trust in their ability. We had full trust in the excellent linguists we selected and signposted all the review points for the clients, so they could look through and ensure they were satisfied with the flavour of the translations.
The intention was for all staff to be able to choose between taking the english or spanish version, since around 100 members of their 1,400 staff members are Spanish-speaking and located around 5 locations in South America.
The English version was signed off first, and the client was allowed to decide on the wording to be included in the script, as well as providing input on the choice of voiceover artist.
At Marshall E-Learning we relish a challenge, and as a small company based in London, we reflect this mentality by opening our doors to the multinational market. The clients were happy with the impressive translation work we did in adapting the module, all of which was completed in just two weeks.
Their satisfaction with the module was evident when the work was signed off on the first review, as Anixter were happy that no changes needed to be made to the fine work of our linguists.
Expanding translations to video content
We set the precedent for Marshall Elearning’s ability to adapt content for an overseas audience with Prudential. Having done so, we were easily able to create a diversity video entirely in Czech as a small gesture of goodwill for the hospitality shown to us by the Great British Corporate Education Showcase, hosted at the British Embassy in Prague.
Always looking to add to our portfolio this led to the our collaboration with Anixter, and cemented our belief that Marshall Elearning, a small London-based company, is ready to provide a valuable service on a global scale.
You can see more of our work with Unconscious Bias or the International market by reading about how we translate equality, diversity and inclusion courses or how we tailor our Unconscious Bias elearning courses.
If you’d like to know more about having one of our e-learning courses translated, or if you’d like to receive a demo, please call us on +44 (0)845 123 3909 or email us at contactus@marshallacm.co.uk.
