- July 22, 2020
- Posted by: Eva
- Category: Blog
In our 21st-century world, everything is being globalized, including knowledge.
Inclusive education is increasingly becoming the key to social advancement and multicultural understanding between territories, nations and people.
Educational materials are no longer restricted to one country. Still, they are becoming a global commodity that is regularly being consumed by people of all nationalities, colours, ages, genders, and, more importantly, all languages.
Today, professional providers of education translation services are increasingly partnering with government entities, educational institutions and e-learning businesses to translate educational curricula and corporate training materials that cater to the needs of multilingual students and multilingual employees across the world.
Education is now being delivered to students and corporate workforces in their mother tongue ─ and rightly so! According to authoritative sources, the e-learning market size in Europe has the potential to grow by $24.23 billion during the period from 2020 to 2024, and the market’s growth momentum will accelerate during the forecast period because of the steady increase in year-over-year growth
Guidelines for Translating Educational Content
As they usually address specific issues and present subjects in a particular context, educational and training materials are always considered exceptional, and therefore they need special care when it comes to translating them from any source language to multiple target languages.
Whether the project is translating educational content for the use of global students or global employees, there are specific tips that should be taken into consideration by education translation services agencies to help them ensure accuracy, consistency, and high quality of the translation.
First – Take Care of Source Content Quality
What’s the critical issue that’s usually neglected by curricula experts and corporate training managers when they embark upon an educational translation project?
Not the project scope, not the language or languages, not the technology, etc. Everyone usually forgets about the quality of the source content.
This is a big mistake as the source content is the real base for the translated material in other languages. There are two truths in this area. First, if the source materials are well written, it’s good news for the smoothness of the project’s entire process and final results. Second, the larger the number of your target languages, the more impact the source content will have on the translation project.
Second – You Should Have a Template
Though we’ll be talking about the translation process in a moment, it’s important for now to stress that creating a translation template is probably one of the essential steps in the whole process. The translation template should comprise directions for the onscreen content, graphical user interface (GUI) and other relevant aspects. The quality of your education and training content translation will be highly influenced by the overall accuracy and clarity of preparing this template.
Third – Why Not Build Upon Already Translated Materials?
If you’re research-oriented, you’ll undoubtedly find the educational and training materials that have been already translated about your education material, which will help you with abbreviations, terminology and many other aspects.
Besides, you can also find such important information as instructions, common GUI elements and assessment screens of the same curriculum ─ that can effortlessly be reused. With this, you’ll be able to save a lot of time, effort and resources.
Fourth – The Process is Paramount!
There is a bit of bad news for any educational institutions or corporate training departments that tend to partner with amateurs for translating their education courses and training materials. It won’t work this way! It would be best if you worked with a professional vendor of education translation services that have already put in place a rigorous translation process.
The good news, however, is that if your translation partner has a good process, they’ll be able to professionally deliver impressive training materials and eLearning courses into the local languages of your global workforces or your global students. Besides, your translation projects will regularly be achieved with less cost and faster turnaround time. Music to your ears isn’t it?!
Fifth – Translators Should Be Given Full Support
It would help if you chose to work with the professional vendor of education translation services that provides their linguists with the right source/reference material. This material should comprise an explanation of abbreviations and terms in addition to all other relevant input that would make translators’ work smoother, more comfortable and more effective.
Also, you should ensure that you’ve put in place some proper project management that provides continuous and effective communication with the translators. Importantly, linguists should be told from the very outset if the project requires that they “localize” any images or content, as doing it later would have cost repercussions.
Why EuroLingo?
Experience matters! For over 15 years, EuroLingo has extensive experience in providing premium education translation services for big brands across almost all industries in addition to top-notch educational and e-learning business all over Europe, the United States, and the Far East.
At EuroLingo, our top-quality translations are carried out by highly qualified experts with proven experience in translating online courses and training materials from and into all the languages spoken in Europe, the USA and Asia.
Since day one in 2004, we’ve always been using a rigorous process that comprises an accurate analysis of the source content, translation of all content elements, and production of translated items.
With this meticulous process in place, EuroLingo has earned an impressive reputation for high-quality translation of a wide diversity of education and e-Learning materials ─ including in-classroom content, curriculum and course requirements, textbooks, study guides, research and reports, training materials, academic papers and bibliographies as well as many other types of education-related content.
