Localizing Adobe Captivate projects

[community_help]

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/captivate/cp/using/WSc1b83f70210cd101-157ec7f211c7ef6052c-7ffe.html

[7l7]

This procedure did not work in Captivate 6.

The objects exported and the import of translated text stated it was successful, but the text did not translate.

Any suggestions?

[Sankaram]

Hi All,

     May I know What you guys are trying? I presume that you are exporting the XML and updating the strings with different locale and re-importing the XML doesn't reflect the updated strings in Captivate project. If that is the case, verify your exported XML for the validity, as it might contain invalid characters.

Do the following for successful locale import:

1) Export the project as XML.

2) Open the XML in chrome browser --> which shows line containing invalid character.

3) Open the XML in XML editor (You can use Notepad ++)

4) Go to that line and you can see invalid character.

5) Delete the invalid character.

6) Repeat steps 2 to 5 till you can see valid XML in chrome.

7) Change the locale strings.

8) Import the XML.

You should be able to view the locale changes.

Let me know if that works.

Thanks,

Sankaram.

[jay fresno]

I had the same problem. I edited the XML in Edit Pad Pro. When I took your suggestion and opened the XML in Chrome, Chrome said that there was an error. But the error wasn't highlighted and I couldn't find the error. Therefore, I couldn't fix the error.

Is there a simpler, more accurate way to import and export XML from Captivate 6, and to edit it without errors? Do you recommend a specific editor - maybe there is one that is better to use than Edit pad Pro?

[Lilybiri]

Jay, I use Export/Import to Word to localize text captions, any reason why you prefer XML. Just out of curiosity,

Lilybiri

[jay fresno]

Hi Lilybiri,

While the text inside the captions can be edited using Export/Import to Word, XML should provide more flexible editability. For example, edit color, font, and so forth.

The main reason I am exploring XML is that I look for different ways of doing things, trying to see if there is a more efficient way.

So far I've hit a deadend with XML. I believe it has potential but is obviously not working well in Captivate version 6. At least not for me, and not for a number of other people.

[RodWard]

Nick,

It may just be that you are trying to use XML in a way that Captivate does not currently support.  If you can come up with a use case for what you are trying to do, log it as an enhancement request.  If enough other people are looking for similar functionality, perhaps Adobe will consider the enhancement for a future version of Captivate.  By the same token, if nobody else but you is looking for this use case, it's unlikely Adobe would pour development dollars into such and edge case.  That's just business.

[jay fresno]

Rod,

There must be some reason why Adobe included the XML import/export in Captivate.

My understanding is that all of the following can be included and edited in the XML (much more than the Word roundtripping):

Text Captions, Text Animations, Rollover Captions, Default text and correct

entries in Text Entry Box, Success/Failure/Hint Captions and button text for all interactive objects, Text Buttons, Slide Notes, Text and Rollover Captions in Rollover Slidelets, Quiz Buttons and Feedback captions, Project Info, Project Start and End options, text messages for password and Expiry Messages

I'm trying to see how I can make use of this feature, but haven't found any postings about how to make it work or how others may be using it.

[RodWard]

Jay,

You may be quite correct that all of these things should be possible with XML in Captivate.  But what I'm saying is that if you ask a question on this forum and nobody seems to know the answer, then it may be indicating very few developers are using that same area of Captivate. 

If you are trying to use a Captivate feature in the way that the Help doco seems to indicate it should work, but it's not working for you, then you may have found a bug and should log it.  Either way, whether it's a bug fix or an enhancement required, just talking about it here on the user forum won't make it happen.  You need to tell Adobe about it via the proper channel.

Having said that, I agree that the Captivate documentation could be improved in places.  It's one of the reasons why this user forum sees so many questions.  You can log an enhancement request for more documentation about a given feature too.

[jay fresno]

Rod,

What you say is true. I'll log a request as you suggested.

[Lilybiri]

Please do, Jay, I have been struggling since long to have localisation features being improved but apparently only few users are asking for such enhancements. I do a lot of localising since I'm teaching in 3 languages and using Captivate English version. And localising is a pain... I had hoped that themes could help, so that just switching a theme could take care of some localisation features but they are still only focusing on look and styles. Having tried XML for localising in the past and had a lot of issues, so I switched to Word workflow that is a little bit more reliable but not totaly.

And you know that I started blogging and writing because of the lack of documentation from Adobe

Lilybiri

[jay fresno]

Lilybiri, your contributions in your blogs have been enormously helpful to me.

[er0425]

I just had this similar experience with Captivate 6. Any solution made for this?

[RMulford]

I localize my Adobe Captivate projects in up to 9 languages (including Korean and Chinese) and have found the imports to be VERY sensitive to any changes in the Word doc, such as reformatting the table containing the text, or changing anything about the English source text. I typically highlight the cells where I need the translators to enter the localized text and make it very clear to them that they should not touch anything else in the document.

I've also encountered problems importing the closed caption text if I delete the English audio files between the time I export the captions and then try to reimport the translated versions. Closed captions are somehow linked to or associated with the audio files and won't import as expected if there is no longer an audio file attached to the slide.

Has anyone experienced problems exporting caption files? I have a project now that exports the text captions for the first 19 or 20 slides and that's all--the rest of the text captions and all of the closed captions are omitted. Anyone have any ideas what might be causing this?

[jay fresno]

I don't localize my Captivate projects, but I have at times had problems with 'round-tripping' the captions to Word and back to Captivate, where the changes made in Word were not updated in Captivate. I haven't experienced this problem with version 6 so far, but it happened fairly often with Captivate 5 and 5.5. I don't know what was causing this irregularity. Sometimes saving the Captivate project, reopening it, and re-importing the Word changes fixed the problem and sometimes not.