Training a Multilingual Environment in SharePoint

Training a Multilingual Environment in SharePoint

Multilingual SharePoint? Si, Oui and Já!

Multilingual SharePoint Training? Ne, Nej and Nein!

Do a Google search for “multilingual SharePoint training” and you’ll find an endless series of links providing information about how easy it is to get the SharePoint platform to adapt itself to the needs of a multilingual world.  And while that’s true, and Microsoft has done an incredible job in making SharePoint a great multilingual platform, it’s not what you were searching for. Multilingual SharePoint training is almost impossible to find.


The popular model for SharePoint training in corporate America today is “train the trainer”.  This is when an organization selects a small number of people and sends them off-site to have them trained in a two-day “boot camp”.  When they come back, they’re supposed to train all of their peers! yikes!  Not only are these boot camps expensive, often in excess of $1000 per person, but actual retention of the technical information can be down to as little as 10% by only 30 days after the training.  When surveyed, a vast majority of people considered the “train the trainer” style of SharePoint training to be the main reason for poor SharePoint adoption.

Before you say “déguster” there’s more!

If you think that situation is bad, imagine the complexity of trying to train a multilingual corporate environment in SharePoint!

Well the good news is that now you can, and the model for achieving it is more effective and dramatically less expensive than the “train the trainer” model that it replaces. (Hint: TV has been doing it for a while, and no it’s not subtitles)

The newly emerging model for SharePoint training in a corporate environment is the implementation of a training site that houses a curriculum composed of a series of short videos.  These videos serve double duty for the organization.  Watched in series they are a complete SharePoint training curriculum.  Watched when searched for (“how do I delete alerts”) they provide an automated help desk that immediately provides a short video answer to all common SharePoint questions.

Es un milagro!

The real advantage here is that when video is used as the medium for training, it becomes incredibly easy (not to mention cost-effective) to implement alternate languages in the audio track!  The ability to provide consistent training across a multilingual SharePoint environment is not only invaluable, it has become incredibly easy to achieve.  Voilà.