Rise translation cost: What multilingual Rise really costs

Rise translation cost: the numbers behind a multilingual course

Rise makes building a course fast. Translating one is a different exercise, and the cost lands in places the authoring price never warned you about.

How Rise translation works

Rise supports an XLIFF export and import workflow. You export the course text, send the file to a translator or agency, receive it back, import it, and Rise creates a translated copy of the course. Machine translation via the AI assistant is also available for a first pass.

The mechanics are sound. The cost comes from everything that surrounds them.

Where Rise translation cost actually accumulates

The word count is bigger than you think. A 45-minute Rise course is typically around 6,000 words once you include knowledge check stems, answer options, feedback text, block labels and button copy. At £0.13 per word that is £780 per language before anything else.

One copy per language. Rise creates a separate course per translated language. Five languages means five courses to maintain. When the English source changes, you repeat the export, translation, import and review cycle five times - and you republish five SCORM packages to your LMS.

Layout rework. German and Finnish expand against English; text that fitted a statement block no longer does. Right-to-left languages are the hard case - Rise handles RTL text, but the surrounding experience is not fully mirrored, so Arabic and Hebrew courses need checking block by block.

Media is not in the XLIFF. Text on images, embedded video subtitles and any narration are separate line items with their own suppliers.

Every update repeats the cycle. This is the number that matters. Annual policy revisions across five languages mean five export-translate-import-review-republish runs, every year, indefinitely.

A realistic five-language total

For one 45-minute course into five languages: roughly £3,900 in translation, £500 to £600 in export/import handling, £1,000 to £1,500 in layout checking and fixes, plus project management. Call it £6,000 to £7,000 in year one, and around half of that again for each meaningful revision.

Multiply by a catalogue of twenty courses and multilingual stops being a project and starts being a permanent cost line.

The alternative: translate in place

The structural problem is not the translation quality - it is the export. Once text leaves the tool, someone has to bring it back and fix what broke.

CourseAgent translates a finished course into 90 languages inside the editor. No XLIFF, no re-import, no separate course per language to maintain, and right-to-left languages mirror the whole experience - editor, learner portal, emails, certificates and charts - automatically. Update the source and re-translate; the SCORM package your LMS points at can be Dynamic SCORM, so learners get the update without you republishing anything.

Cost is the subscription: £35 per month (ex VAT) on Professional, regardless of word count or language count.

Work out your own figure

Take one Rise course you have already translated, and rebuild it from its source during a 7-day free trial. Translate it into the same languages and compare the invoice you paid with the time it took.

The broader per-word breakdown is in eLearning translation cost in 2026, and the workflow comparison is in translating e-learning courses: AI vs agency.