This article was originally written and published by Panopto in partnership with Elai.
Global workforces are growing more linguistically diverse, and the expectation that training content should meet employees in their own language is no longer a nice-to-have. According to the Association for Talent Development (ATD), localisation improves training effectiveness, with research showing that localised content drives deeper engagement, faster course completion, and stronger knowledge retention, ultimately leading to better on-the-job performance.
The question most organizations are working through isn’t whether to localize training; it’s how to do it efficiently, consistently, and without the production overhead that traditionally made multilingual content so difficult to sustain.
Why Multilingual Video Is Different
Video has become a default format for training content, and for good reason. It’s engaging, standardized, and accessible across devices. But the moment a team needs to deliver that same video in five, ten, or fifteen languages, the production model gets complicated. Traditional approaches—recording separate narrations per language, hiring translators and voice actors, syncing audio to existing footage—multiply effort at every step. A single update to the source content can trigger a full re-production cycle across all language versions.
This is where AI-assisted platforms are changing how organizations approach the problem. Elai is built around this kind of multilingual, scalable production. It supports over 75 languages with more than 450 voices and accents. The creator can generate localized versions automatically, without rebuilding the video from scratch or coordinating new recording sessions.
From Presentation Decks to Microlearning
One practical barrier to video-based training is the effort required to convert existing content. Most organizations have a substantial library of PowerPoint presentations: onboarding decks, product training, and compliance overviews that contain good information.
Elai includes a PowerPoint-to-video conversion feature that lets teams bring those existing assets directly into the platform. The slides serve as the structural backbone, and the tool builds narrated video content around them. Crucially, large decks don’t have to become large videos. They can be broken into focused microlearning snippets, short modules covering a single concept, which are better suited to how employees actually learn, particularly across different time zones and working schedules.
LKQ Europe, a leading automotive parts distributor with over 26,000 employees across multiple countries, used this approach to build out content for LKQ Academy, their customer training program. The ability to convert PowerPoint presentations directly into training videos was a key factor in making the process manageable for their team. Early results showed a reduction in video production costs of over 80% compared to their previous approach, and the translation process became significantly faster. “The ability to create content directly from PowerPoint presentations is a big advantage,” the LKQ team noted.
Narration Without a Studio
One of the more time-consuming elements of traditional video production is narration: finding the right voice, scheduling recording sessions, and returning for revisions whenever the script changes. Elai’s talking avatars handle this part of the process through AI-generated presenters that deliver narration directly from a written script. The avatars are designed to present naturally, making the format suitable for professional training contexts without requiring a production crew.
LKQ’s team saw this play out in practice: “LKQ can produce training videos across Europe and deliver them via LKQ Academy. The platform supports rapid content development, robust SCORM compatibility, PowerPoint integration, and scalable multilingual capabilities.” They started with content in two languages and are actively planning to expand to more than ten.
Learning That Fits Around Real Work
Beyond production, there’s the question of how employees actually engage with video training once it’s delivered. Effective formats for distributed teams tend to be self-paced and easy to revisit. Customers watching Elai-produced videos can rewatch a module, pause mid-lesson, slow the playback speed, or jump back to a specific scene — all on their own schedule, from any device.
This flexibility matters especially for teams spread across multiple regions and shift schedules. Training doesn’t need to be a synchronous, scheduled event. When content is broken into short, accessible modules and delivered in a language the employee is comfortable with, the barrier to engaging with it drops considerably.
The Production Question Behind the Strategy
For any organization thinking about multilingual training at scale, the practical questions usually come down to: how long will this take, what will it cost, and can we keep it current? As the number of required languages grows, those questions get harder to answer with traditional production models.
Platforms like Elai are designed to address that directly. By combining AI narration, instant translation across a wide range of languages, and content conversion tools that work with existing assets, they allow smaller teams to maintain a multilingual content library that would otherwise require significant outsourcing. For LKQ, the result was cost efficiency alongside the ability to keep content ownership in-house and deliver it consistently to customers across Europe.
“Elai offers a strong product at a competitive price,” the LKQ team noted. “The balance of features and value for money stood out.”
As organizations continue to expand their geographic reach, the gap between what employees need and what L&D teams can realistically produce in multiple languages is one of the more pressing operational challenges in workplace learning. The tooling to close that gap is becoming more capable — and for teams ready to rethink their production workflow, the payoff can be significant.