Parents and Variations are a key component to creating Multi-Language Projects. Multi-Language Projects are made up of a source Project (called a Parent) and one or more different language versions (or Variations) of that source.
This article explains the base behaviour of Parents and Variations in more detail, how it relates to the translation process, and how a course‘s format differs depending on where it is released from.
Behaviour overview
Parents and Variations have a parent-child relationship that makes them function differently to regular Projects. This section explains the default behaviour of Parent and Variation courses and their relationship to one another.
Base behaviour
The Parent acts as a central control.
Edits you make in the Parent are automatically inherited by its Variations to help prevent lengthy editing processes and ensure the journey and experience of your language versions remains consistent. For example, changing the background colour in your Parent will also automatically apply the same change to all of its Variations.
Here‘s a step-by-step representative example of how this works in a Parent with three Variations where the original background colour is grey.
- In the Parent, change the background colour from grey to blue
- Save changes to confirm
- Following the save, the background colour in all three Variations is automatically changed from grey to blue
This is considered the default ‘base behaviour‘.
How editing Variations affects the base behaviour
If you make an edit directly to element in a Variation, it will only apply to to that element. It will not be inherited elsewhere. Additionally, the edited element will no longer respond to changes from the Parent.
For example, changing the background colour in one Variation will only apply that change there. If the background colour is then changed via the Parent, that Variation‘s colour will not be changed. The other unedited Variations will continue to respond to the Parent‘s change.
Here‘s a step-by-step representative example of how this works in a Parent with three Variations where the original background colour is grey.
- In Variation 1, change the background colour from grey to blue.
- Save changes.
- Only Variation 1 is blue; the others stay grey.
- In the Parent, change the background colour from grey to green.
- Save changes.
- Variations 2 and 3 respond to the change from the Parent and inherit the change; Variation 1 remains blue.
All other elements in a Variation will continue to adhere to the base behaviour provided they haven‘t also been directly edited.
How this applies to translation
Whether you‘re using Auto-Translate, translation files, or side-by-side mode, the process of translating Variations remains the same: the source text inherited from the Parent is directly replaced with the target text.
This means that each Variation can have individual control over its own text content but still defer the control of layout, structure, and configuration to the Parent.
This also allows you to make further changes to the text and media of your Variations for localization purposes and more closely cater to regional or cultural differences—for instance, providing a different image for different locations.
Releasing from the Parent vs from a Variation
The output format of a Multi-Language Project changes based where you release it from.
Releasing from the Parent
If you make a release from the Parent, the resulting output will be a Multi-Language course. Multi-Language courses package each language version of your course into one SCORM or Online Link.
A drop-down menu showing the language versions you have created will automatically be added to the beginning of your course. Learners use the menu to choose a course language before they begin.
This is the recommended option for providing multi-language content as it allows you to efficiently distribute many different language versions of the same content as one course.
Releasing from a Variation
Releasing from a particular Variation will result in a more conventional single-language course (similar to if you were to release from a regular Project). The language selection drop-down menu will not be offered and there is no way for the learner to access any of the other languages that are part of your Multi-Language Project.
The released Variation will still remain connected to the Parent so if any changes have been made to the Parent that the Variation has inherited, these changes will be reflected if the course is re-released.
This is useful if you want to individually distribute your content in multiple languages but retain the convenient functionality of Parents and Variations.