You may have videos in your Multi-Language courses with captions that need to be translated along with the rest of the course.
There are several ways you can translate your captions:
- Translating the captions with a translation file by uploading a caption file to the Parent course and using the translation file to translate them for each Variation. This is a useful method if you'd prefer to translate captions at the same time as the rest of your course.
- Translate the caption files separately, then upload them to the Variations individually. This may be necessary for some users who have already translated their captions and do not need to do it again
Translating captions with a translation file
1. Create an SRT or VTT file with your captions in the language the Parent course was authored in
2. Upload the captions to your course. You can learn more about how to do this in Adding captions to your course's media
3. Export a translation file from the course. You can find out how to do this in Exporting a translation file from a Parent Course in Variations Manager.
There are two types of translation files you can export:
- XLIFF which is a specialized translation format that third-party translation vendors use
- CSV which is more suited to in-house translation
Translating captions in an XLIFF file
Captions are included in the rest of the text in the file so your translation vendor will likely translate the captions as part of their service.
They will probably be familiar with SRT and VTT files and aware they require a specific format. However, you may want to confirm with your vendor that the formatting of the text must remain the same.
Translating captions in a CSV
If you're using a CSV, you are likely translating in-house, without the help of a third-party vendor.
CSVs can be opened in spreadsheets and do not require the specialist software that XLIFFs do.
Captions will be included in the CSV export and can be translated similarly to the rest of the text.
There are three lines in the CSV that refer to a caption file:
- content.xxxxxxx which is the CDN reference for the caption file on the Elucidat servers. This is for reference only and should not be amended
- caption.yyyyyyy-title which is the name of the caption file
- caption.yyyyyyy which is the text content of the caption file referenced in the line above
Translating the captions
1. Copy the source text of caption.yyyyyyy from Column C and add it to Column D with the correct translation.
You must take care to preserve the SRT or VTT format when adding the translated text to Column D. If the text is incorrectly formatted, the captions will not work properly.
For example, if an English source caption in Column C is:
0
00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:05.890
Test Captions Line 0
Then a Spanish target caption in Column D would be:
0
00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:05.890
subtítulos de prueba línea 0
2. Save your changes and export the file as a CSV from your spreadsheet
3. Import the file into Elucidat to create the Variation(s) and translate the captions (along with any other text you may have updated in the CSV)
For more in-depth information about CSV translation files, see Understanding CSV translation files.
|
Note: Translating a caption file using this method will mean that the same caption file will be used for all Variations rather than a new, separate caption file being created for each one. In other words, if you are translating into Spanish, a new Spanish caption file will not be created and added to your Asset Library. Instead, the original caption file's text will be changed in each Variation where it has been translated. This is so that the caption's Parent/Variation relationship is preserved and any changes to the caption file (for example if it is deleted) will apply to all Variations. If you would like to be able to separately manage the captions in your Variations, you may want to translate them separately and upload them directly to each Variation. |
Translating caption files separately
If you have already translated your caption files outside of Elucidat, you can upload them to the media in your Variations separately after they have been created rather than including them in the translation itself.
If this is the case, the caption lines in the translation CSV or XLIFF can be ignored during the course translation process.
Once you have created the Variations, follow the steps outlined in Adding captions to your course's media to add the captions to each Variation.