Multilingual Training Videos: A Review Checklist

A review checklist for multilingual training videos

Multilingual training videos fail in small, specific ways: a product name translated when it should not be, a number read in the wrong format, on-screen text left in English under a Spanish voice, a version that quietly falls behind the source. This checklist catches those before learners do.

It is for the L&D lead who has one approved English (or Hindi, or German) training video and needs it in several more languages. Print it, or copy it into your review tracker.

Before you generate

• Decide a route for each language: a full new version, captions only, or skip for now.
• Freeze the source. Translate from an approved version, never a draft.
• Write a term list: product names, system names and job titles that stay in the source language.
• Note how each market writes numbers, dates, currency and units.
• Swap examples that do not travel: holidays, sports, local laws, names.
• Name one native-speaking reviewer per language, and give them a date.

In every language version

• Names and terms from the list are untouched.
• Numbers, dates and units are in the local format and still correct.
• On-screen text matches the narration language, or you chose to keep it in the source language on purpose.
• Longer text still fits: no clipped labels, no captions covering a diagram.
• The voice suits the audience and is the same across the whole series.
• Captions exist and match the narration.

Review and after release

• The reviewer watched every scene with the source open beside it.
• Fixes went into the version, and the reviewer signed off in writing.
• When the source changes, every language is updated or marked out of date.

The rest of this post explains each part.

Step 1: Pick a route per language

Not every language needs the same treatment. Match the effort to how the audience will use the video.

Route	What changes	Pick it when
New version from the source document	Everything: script, narration, scenes	The audience works mainly in that language and the topic is safety or compliance
Translate narration and on-screen text	Voice and the words drawn in each scene	Scenes carry labels, steps or numbers the learner must read
Translate narration only	Voice; artwork stays as it was	Scenes are mostly pictures with little text
Subtitles only	Captions; original narration stays	The audience reads the source language well, or you need something this week
Skip for now	Nothing	Few learners, or a short-lived message

In Interlace, the first route means making the video again with the narration language set to the target language, from the same source document. Interlace narrates in 28 languages, nine of them Indian. The other three routes live on a finished video: click Translate, pick the languages, and choose Subtitles only, Translated narration or Narration and on-screen text. Every language you pick becomes its own version you can open, edit and share. See multilingual video for how the modes differ.

Translated narration keeps the artwork as it was. If a scene shows "Step 3: Lock out the machine" as text, that text stays in the source language. Choose Narration and on-screen text for any video where learners need to read what is on screen.

Step 2: Prepare the source before generating

Most translation problems start in the source. Fix them once, in one language, before they multiply.

Terms that stay put. List the product names, internal system names, form numbers and job titles that must not be translated. In workplace Hindi, many teams keep words like "login", "password" and "ticket" in English because that is what staff say and see on screen. Ask your reviewer which terms their team really uses.

Names and people. Replace a culture-specific name in an example only if it would confuse the learner. Keep it if the example refers to a real person or role.

Numbers and units. India groups large numbers in lakhs and crores. Much of Europe writes a decimal comma. The US uses feet and Fahrenheit. Write the source so a number is easy to convert, and check each one after.

Examples that travel. A scenario about a Thanksgiving rota means little in Pune. A generic "holiday week" works everywhere.

Plain sentences. Short sentences with one idea each translate better and read better as captions. Idioms and wordplay rarely survive.

Step 3: Check each version

Watch each version once with sound, once with the source beside it. Look for:

• Names and terms. Anything on your term list that got translated anyway.
• On-screen text. Words drawn in the scene that do not match the narration language, or that got shortened in a way that changes the meaning.
• Text length. Many languages, German and French among them, need more characters than English for the same sentence. Look for crowded labels and captions that break into awkward lines.
• Numbers. Every figure, date and threshold, against the source.
• Voice. One voice per language across a whole course, picked by someone who speaks the language. Play a few voices before you choose.
• Captions. In the Export menu, the caption language list includes each subtitle translation you have made, so you can burn in the right one or download it as a .srt or .vtt file. Our post on SRT vs VTT vs burned-in captions covers which format each player needs.

Step 4: Have a native speaker review scene by scene

Machine translation is good enough to draft from and not good enough to ship a compliance video on without a person checking it. The reviewer should be someone who does the job the video trains, or manages people who do. A professional translator who does not know the work will miss the wrong term for a machine part.

Give the reviewer:

• The source video and the approved source document.
• Your term list and any market notes from Step 2.
• A table with one row per scene: scene number, what is wrong, suggested fix.

Ask for fixes in their words, not a grade. "Scene 4: say 'shift supervisor', not 'shift manager'" can be applied in minutes. "The translation feels stiff" cannot.

Because each language is its own version, you edit only the scenes the reviewer flagged, in that language, without touching the others.

Step 5: Keep versions in step when the source changes

Policies change. The hard part of multilingual training comes at the third update, when half the languages are a version behind and nobody is sure which.

• Update the source first. Approve the new source video before touching any language.
• Re-translate, do not re-create. In Interlace, when the source video publishes a newer cut, each translated version shows a banner saying the source has changed, with a Re-translate button. Re-translating updates the same translated video, so its link and share history stay the same.
• Re-review only what changed. Send the reviewer the changed scenes, not the whole video.
• Keep a record. Note the date, the source version and the reviewer for each language. Auditors ask for it.

For the longer argument on generating languages from one source, read how to localize video without re-recording. To translate a script by hand before you generate anything, the script translator shows each language side by side and how much longer or shorter each one runs.

Start with one extra language

Pick the language with the most learners, run it through this checklist, and time how long review takes. That number tells you what the next five languages will cost your reviewers. When you are ready to try it on your own training video, join Interlace.