Export-Import in non-English character sets, for translation

Report · Feb 25, 2018

I'm on Captivate 10 (10.0.0.192). I've exported an XML file for translation to Swedish. Example of one English source phrase -

and encourage you to work on environmental activities independently

Translated to Swedish, this gives -

och för att uppmuntra till självständigt miljöarbete

Once imported back into Captivate, it looks like this -

och fÃ¶r att uppmuntra till sjÃ¤lvstÃ¤ndigt miljÃ¶arbete

I haven't actually typed anything. (And I'm still expecting translations in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew and Malayalam to import.)

Is there some way of setting character sets and text encoding for exports? (All my other software display these correctly.) It seems there isn't this option in Preferences or Project Info, besides setting "Spelling" to Sverige.

Report · Feb 25, 2018

The usual method of translation for Captivate projects (as I understand it) is to use File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions.

This creates an MS Word document with columns for the existing text and the translated (edited) text. Once this document has been translated, you can re-import it back into Captivate and see the on screen text updated accordingly. But you need to make sure you make no changes to the original CPTX in the interim.

Have you tried using that method instead of exporting / importing XML?

Report · Feb 25, 2018

Yes. Nothing changes whatsoever. This seems to happen with any languages that drift significantly from the English character set. Languages like Spanish leave out entire sentences that begin with a special (or accented) character, but while a Swedish-translated Word export gives me the message "imported successfully", nothing has changed at all. (There isn't even the "*" - unsaved - extension in the .cptx file name.).

Exporting from a Swedish-language Captivate project to XML is also complicated. A text such as

Välkommen till miljöutbildningen.

comes out in the XML file as

V\u228?lkommen till milj\u246?utbildningen.

I would expect there to be a simple config setting to set the text encoding on export and/or import.

Report · Feb 26, 2018

I didn't use that option recently although I often had to translate courses from Dutch to English and French. I shoudl find time to check because both Dutch and French do have combination characters and a different keyboard, not a s much as Swedish nor Spanish of course.