Translation Case Study: Helping a Global Audience Achieve Peace

Online courses are intended to reach the broadest possible audience, wherever they may be. It makes sense, then, that these courses are available in multiple languages. This is especially important when the course is covering the policies and issues that impact the state of global affairs, which is the case for the online courses offered by a leading nonprofit institute in the United States.

When this organization wanted to make one of its online courses available to prospective students in the Middle East, the organization turned to Ubiqus to make the content accessible to Arabic speakers in both print and multimedia formats.

The Situation

A prominent institute, dedicated to preventing, mitigating and resolving violent conflicts around the world, offers education and training to practitioners working locally and globally to resolve conflicts peacefully. Since 1997, the institute has attracted 65,000 enrollees in its range of courses.

Since many of these learners are located outside the United States, it’s important that training materials are available in multiple languages. The same was true for a course providing an introduction to the theories and approaches to achieving peace. The course contains content in multiple formats, including web, video and print, and the organization needed a translation partner with experience in translating for all three formats.

The organization ultimately selected Ubiqus for the entire project, tasking us to translate all course materials into Modern Standard Arabic, which would give the course the widest possible reach across the Arabic-speaking world.

The Solution

Ubiqus offers solutions for translation of written, online and video content, and it applied all of them to the project.

The first step was to translate the course materials. Web pages related to the course were translated into Arabic, followed by documents from each of the course’s five chapters. Next, the English transcripts that accompanied the course videos were not only translated into Arabic but were also supplemented with time stamps.

After the documents were translated and reviewed, the organization wanted an Arabic voiceover for its English-language videos. The Ubiqus team coordinated with a recording studio to select the vocal talent, making sure the tone of voice and overall style were consistent with previous voiceover projects.

The voice actors narrated the transcripts created during the first phase of the project, and then the studio converted the narration into the proper audio format. The files were sent to the organization, and their team overlaid the audio file onto the course videos, timing it so the Arabic voiceover synced as closely as possible to the English narration.

The Outcome

The translations of course materials, videos and video transcripts made the course accessible to Arabic speakers throughout the Middle East. Those who enrolled in the course were then able to apply what they learned to mitigate conflict in their communities.

If you have a multimedia course that needs expert translation, contact the translation team at Ubiqus to learn more about our approach.