E-learning and corporate training programs are most effective when they focus on a learner’s native language and the cultural nuances of their geographic location. The URL dr sits down with Zeph Snapp, owner and founder of Altura Interactive, a Spanish digital marketing company that serves as a guide to US companies who are interested in tapping into Hispanic markets.
Join the discussion as they talk about the differences between translation (converting a digital learning course from English into a target language like Spanish) and localization (the process of adapting learning content to the linguistic and cultural needs of a specific audience) in e-learning.
The conversation covers corporate learning and development programs as well as breaking into the Hispanic market as a course author with e-learning courses to sell. Learn how AI impacts the equation and what it’s limitations are.
Interested in finding out more about localization and translation of your e-learning courses and corporate training programs? Visit The URL dr’s site and find out how we can help.
If you want to know more about translating your courses, feel free to ask in the comments below or DM me. I’m here to help!
[00:00:05] Kim Merritt: My guest today, who I am so thrilled to talk to Zeph Snapp, owner and founder of Altura Interactive, a Spanish digital marketing company that serves as a guide to US companies who are interested in tapping into Hispanic markets. So thrilled to talk to you today about this subject, because I’m very surprised, even in the past few months and the past year, how much my clients are asking for translation work for more content in Spanish. So this is your specialty and really excited to talk to you about it.
[00:00:42] Zeph Snapp: Well, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. And I think actually the best way to begin is probably to think about the different ways that you can think about localization or translation, because there’s some ambiguity around those terms. And, and I always like to, make it as specific as possible. Right. So translation that the implication of the word translation is that you’re going that there’s a 1 to 1 relationship between one thing and the other. Right? So but that isn’t necessarily the case. Right. So we break it down in the following way. So a translation would be basically doing as close to a word for word similar, reflection in the new language. Then there’s localization. So localization implies a degree of specialty right. Localization generally speaking it means that you’re going to take into account, a specific location. So localization for us would be Mexican Spanish. It would be Colombian Spanish would be Chilean Spanish. And those are, you know, like three branches that are important, that are all different in the way that they use their forms of address and the way they communicate and in the language that they use.
[00:01:51] Zeph Snapp: That doesn’t mean that we can’t understand each other. Right? It’s sort of like when you talk to someone from the Deep South, you’re speaking the same language, right? But there are going to be things about it that are uncomfortable to understand or that you have to, like, really listen to, in order to get right. And then there’s Transcreation, which is taking the spirit of the thing that you’re reading and applying, well, a measure of understanding, of cultural nuance, of the amount of explanation of terms that need to be taken into account. And, what is going to be the easiest way for the audience to understand it? And so translation is something that machines have been doing for ever since I got in there, you know, like as a large language models and translations. But, transcription is the thing that machines can’t do. Right to add the cultural nuance and the understanding of the audience, even today with the AI models that we can see.
[00:02:56] Kim Merritt: Well, and that’s a really interesting point because everybody’s all about AI. AI this, AI that. And let’s talk about that because AI is great with translation work to a point, but there’s a line in the sand to what it can do and what it can’t do. So I’ll let you start with what your comments are going to be on this.
[00:03:19] Zeph Snapp: My understanding. So we use AI, right? We leveraged it from the beginning because we had to understand, you know, how it was going to work. And what we found is you can absolutely, do things with prompts that are going to improve the quality of your automatic translation. But at the end of the day, it’s still going to be that an automatic translation. And so we find that it’s really good for snippets of text, especially those that are under a paragraph. Right, like 2 or 3 sentences at a time. And, things where it’s very, very clear. Right. If you are going to, make instructions to put together a play set, right, you could probably use an AI translation service to get you most of the way there. I think we’ve all had the experience of opening something that came from China and seeing the way that they translated their instructions to English, right. It’s not the best, but you can deal with it. You can get past it. Right. But when you’re talking about, you know, like deep learning on subjects of, intellectual nature, of mathematics or science or even literature, right. Anything that requires, you know, like an understanding of the context. It’s just going to be more difficult for an automatic translation to, get you where you need to be.
[00:04:39] Kim Merritt: Well, and I agree, I mean, we use it. Sbsolutely our instructional designers use it and our video team uses it to do translation work into other languages. But that’s not the end of the process. It always then goes to a human editor, that is a language that they speak, and they are the ones that go through and make sure that grammar and the way that it’s being taught and the language matches up to whoever it is the audience is, it’s not left to AI to make the final decision as to what that text and that script is.
[00:05:21] Zeph Snapp: Well, and that’s how it should be. Right. Like. Yes. And there, you know, I think the other thing that is that so we do a lot of work in the legal field. Right. And they’re, trying to sell services while remain compliant too, because there are things they can’t say when they’re talking about their services. That’s something that you can tell a machine, hey, you know, exclude this, but it’s going to get through sometimes anyway. So as it relates to all this, the human filter always has to be the last touch. Right. And and that’s, sort of how we structure our translation services now to when, we have them is we say, well, you know, some of this is going to be AI assisted. But, you know, like there’s also going to be this human element over the top. And then the last part of this is in a way, especially with marketing materials, what you’re doing isn’t really translation. What you’re doing is copywriting. And that’s a different skill and a different output that you’re looking for. And that’s something that while I can do it’, it might give you like a bunch of options you can choose from. There still has to be a human who’s going to decide what’s the best copy for this? What’s going to be the most effective way to reach the audience?
[00:06:36] Kim Merritt: Absolutely, absolutely. Let’s talk about the Hispanic market in both the US and Mexico and other countries, because a lot of course authors that we deal with, they’re creating courses to sell, and they’re very interested, obviously. Where can I sell more courses? How can I sell more courses? Putting those courses from English into Spanish and other languages is an option. So talk to me about the Spanish market itself. And you know what we want to think of as course authors in looking at putting our course into Spanish to serve another audience.
[00:07:19] Zeph Snapp: Absolutely. So the first thing is the US Hispanic audience by itself is enormous. It’s over 10% of the population is Spanish speaking. First, you’ve got about 40 million people in the United States who speak primarily Spanish. And those are just, you know, the ones that that we’ve counted. You also have in Mexico, you’ve got 120 million people. And while the economics in Mexico are different, right. Like that’s actually something to keep in mind is that depending on who you’re targeting, you know, income in Mexico is going to be about a third of what it is in the US on average. So sometimes money is going to be part of the reason why, someone doesn’t buy your course if the price point isn’t right. One of the options that people use here very often for that reason is they use, partial payments via credit card. Right. So, the which in the United States is I think it’s like a is it a firm who does that? Well, in Mexico and Latin America, there’s a company called Qsc which basically allows you to divide up your credit card payments into, you know, 6 or 12 months if you want to, or of course, then you can offer the, same course that you might sell in United States for $2,500 or something like that. You could offer for the same price, but you could say, hey, you can pay for it over a year, right? Another thing to keep in mind too, is, you know, I’m recording this on a laptop in my office. That is unusual. The vast majority of machines on the internet in Latin America are Android based cellular phones. And so whenever you’re thinking about how you’re going to format your information or how you’re going to deliver it to people, you should keep in mind that’s the most prevalent way that people get on the internet, and therefore the most likely place that they’re going to engage with your course.
[00:09:05] Kim Merritt: And that’s always a concern and of top interest when we’re designing courses, because, yes, a lot of people are taking these courses on mobile devices. A lot of them, even at work, are using a mobile device. And it’s super, super important to keep that in mind. What are some points to keep in mind about Hispanics and the way they buy consulting services and online courses?
[00:09:33] Zeph Snapp: Well, so the first thing is, as an educator from another country, you would think that that would make it more difficult for you to sell to, people in Latin America. And actually what we found is that the opposite is true. That there is a degree of prestige and of acknowledgement of expertise. When you study in another country or a course from another place, that while there are local institutions that, you know, like would rival that there. It’s actually a positive rather than a negative. Especially if you have the localization situation, handled because it means that they’re going to have the certification from an instructor in the United States that’s going to give them, something to show their employer or their future employer that shows their expertise in a given area. I think that one of the biggest problems when you’re working with an outsource organization is alignment. And so what we did is we built a template for a translation style guide, which is basically what we do is when we take on a new client, we always, read their website, look at their supporting material, try and understand their market, and then we build a document that expresses this from our perspective and the points to take into consideration when we’re building a translation or a localization project. And so the end result is a living document in Google Docs with a left side that’s in English and a right side that’s in Spanish. We write it in Spanish first. We translate it to English for the client to review. The form of address, the terminology that we think is right, what should be inbounds, what should be out of bounds, and what we’re looking for the best clients give you comments on that document, and they tell you, actually, this is wrong.
[00:11:28] Zeph Snapp: Actually, this is the way that we would like to do things. They have an opinion, they have a point of view, and they express that there. Once we see that and we have that, it makes our job a lot easier because we can use this with all of our writers and the people who are working on the account and say that we’ve established the rules, that this is where you are, please color inside the lines. And that’s meant that the deliverables that we give to the client when they review them are going to be much better. And, you know, they might even during the review process because we provide two rounds of reviews always. They might tell us we need to add these things to the style guide. These things have changed and it also gives the client a chance to reflect on how they want to be perceived. And what we’ve seen is a lot of times, once we accomplish the style guide, they end up taking that back to their internal teams in English and going, we need to adhere to this for content. When we produce it and, so like that’s something that we, highly recommend that, people do whether or not they work with us or not. But it’s a really great starting point to think about how you want your presence to be in other languages now.
[00:12:38] Kim Merritt: And I agree with that 100%, particularly where that comes into play with my team is when we do video, particularly animation. We had a great project that we did recently with a client, the ultimate funder of the project was the CDC, but it was a whole course on prevention of type two diabetes, and they were trying to reach specific at risk populations. One of those was Hispanics who have a very tough time with type two diabetes. So we did the course in English. We did it in Spanish. But for the Spanish we not only translated it, but the visuals in the course were different. The characters were different. They look different. They dress different. We tried to have it be something that would be very relatable to that market. We had the scenery be relatable, not huge changes, but just little nuances that just spoke to who it was we were dealing with. And it just it makes a huge difference. Huge difference. We’ve gotten wonderful reviews. The CDC has gotten wonderful reviews on this course, and one of the things that was said was everybody loved the animation and the characters because they hit home and that was, you know, the whole point. But it’s an important thing to keep in mind when you’re looking at translating these courses, that it’s not just the spoken word, it’s the visual that goes along with it.
[00:14:09] Zeph Snapp: Absolutely. And we do this a lot. Right? So we do a lot of written work and, even on people’s websites when they’re building them, you go, well, you know, you have a white family at the top of this page, you know, maybe you should consider looking at a new image or a new hero image, like, the statistics that are that are in this page are related to, the United States or to parts of the United States, which they wouldn’t be able to relate to. Maybe we need to update this information and add some context to this so that they understand how it applies to them specifically. And yeah, like it sounds like you are crossing your T’s and dotting your i’s, which we.
[00:14:53] Kim Merritt: We try very, very hard.
[00:14:55] Zeph Snapp: Thank you so much for asking me to do this.
[00:14:57] Kim Merritt: Thank you.
[00:14:57] Zeph Snapp: Seriously.
[00:14:58] Speaker3: Okay.
[00:14:58] Zeph Snapp: You’ve made my day like, I feel so good coming out of this meeting. Like, legitimately. Like I was kind of like today. And now I feel great. So thank you so much energy transfer I appreciate it.
[00:15:10] Kim Merritt: Thank you, thank you. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to meet through the group. And yeah, look forward to another conversation.
[00:15:18] Zeph Snapp: Sounds good. Take care. Okay.
[00:15:20] Kim Merritt: All right. Bye bye.
