B12 lets you design programs that will be available to your learners in both French and English. This way, you won't have to create two separate programs - it will all be one and the same.
The benefits:
- Learners can change language at any time, in the same way that you can change the language of a website, for example. So a learner can read a question in French, then change the language to see the English version to make sure they've understood it correctly, and so on. New: Learners can easily change language by clicking on their profile icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
- You no longer need to separate your learners into two groups (French and English), and determine which language they will have access to by assigning them a program in either French or English. All learners can be in the same group with the same program, regardless of the language in their profile (see section below on learner language assignment).
- In the dashboards, all your program statistics will be compiled together, regardless of the language of the learners. Depending on the language of the person viewing the dashboard, the information will be presented in either English or French, but will include learners of both languages.
Basics of bilingual programs: main language and translation language
When you want to create a bilingual program, all text fields will be split to allow you to design in both languages. This way, you're less likely to forget any content to be translated, and you'll have a complete overview including both languages.
However, we recognize that you may not have immediate access to your translated text. For example, you may want to design in one language, have the content approved by your experts, and then translate the final content. The concept of main language and translation language allows you to design in stages, without being blocked by missing content.
- Language (main): this language is mandatory - all fields normally required for your activities must be filled in to create your activity. For example, a multiple-choice question must at least contain the question title and an answer choice.
- Translation: the fields for this language can be left empty, so you won't be blocked from creating the activity if they're not filled in. This way, you can create the content in French and add your texts in English at a later stage. Or vice versa.
WARNING: if a field in the translation language is not filled in and the activity is deployed to learners, the main language will be displayed.
Example: You've created a question in French and English, but forgotten to add the English text for the answer choices. At this point, learners who have their profile in English will see the answer choices in French.
To help you visualize this effect, the main language texts will be grayed out in the translation language fields until you add text.
Studio display language for designers
For designers, it can be useful to view the program in the two languages of choice. Also:
- The interface (menus, buttons, instructions, etc.) is displayed in the language of your profile (as usual).
- Sequence titles and activities in the Structure and Activities tab are also in the language of your profile.
- When editing an activity, you can quickly view both language views by clicking on the language icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
💡 To quickly change your profile language, see the new menu under your profile (learners will also have this option in their menu):
How to create/modify a bilingual program
- To create a new bilingual program: select the main language and the translation language when creating the program in step 1.
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To transform an existing program into a bilingual one: modify the program configuration to confirm the primary language (the language of the existing program) and the secondary language (the language you wish to add). (See how to modify a program's configuration for more details.)
- From this point on, all text fields will be split, and the secondary language fields will be empty. This means you can add your secondary language content to existing activities and continue to add content in both languages.
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To remove the secondary language from a program: remove the secondary language from the program and put it back in the unilingual version.
- Frequent user scenario: you had intended to deploy a bilingual program, but your translation was cancelled and you're only going to offer it in one language. However, nothing will prevent your learners from trying to view the content in both languages, which could cause confusion, especially if you had started to include content in the secondary language. In this case, the easiest thing to do is to remove the secondary language from the program and put it back in the unilingual version.
- IMPORTANT: Note that the contents of the secondary language will be stored in B12. If you decide to add the secondary language at a later date, you will be prompted to reactivate these stored contents, or to start again from scratch. Be cautious, however, that if your content has changed, your translation may no longer be up to date.
Knowledge topics and skills
To ensure that dashboards present information in the right language for the user, it's important that knowledge topics be translated into both languages. You can modify existing topics by adding the translation language.
For programs with skill development activities, make sure you also add the secondary language to the skills used from the pedagogical library. The same principles apply to the main and translation languages.
NOTE: As a designer, when you configure your program and create your activities, the topics will be displayed in the language of your profile.
Language display for learner
When a learner profile is created (via CSV or in the B12 interface), a language is specified for each learner. (See Administrator's Guide for details.)
This implies that:
- Notifications are sent in the learner's language (welcome to B12 e-mail, notifications of available sequences, etc.)
- When the user accesses B12 via these notifications, they are redirected to a login page in their language.
- The B12 interface is then displayed in the user's language (buttons, menus, instructions, etc.).
- Bilingual programs are automatically displayed in the user's language.
- If programs are not available in the learner's language (e.g., an English-speaking user has access to unilingual French programs), the content will be displayed in the main language of the program ( as is already the case in unilingual programs). This means that learners will always have access to all their content, regardless of their profile language (to avoid content “disappearing” or blank spaces depending on the language chosen).
Users can change their language at any time from their profile. As long as they don't change it, the new language will be their default language.
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🚩 Note for B12 platforms provisioned with SCIM: if the user language is not specified in SCIM, the platform language will be assigned to them by default.