Why Your Training Videos Need Swahili Subtitles, Not Just English Captions

English captions on a training video check an accessibility box, but they don't necessarily reach the learners a course is actually meant to serve. If a meaningful share of your learners are more comfortable in Swahili than in English, English-only captions solve the wrong problem.

What the research actually shows

Industry research on e-learning consistently finds that a large majority of learners - commonly cited around three-quarters - prefer content in their native language, and that localized e-learning material lifts engagement and completion rates substantially compared to non-localized versions, with some studies putting the gap as high as 50%. Those are broad industry findings, not a Kauli-run study, but the direction is consistent across multiple sources: language match matters more to completion than most course designers assume.

Why this hits harder for training specifically, not just general content

A training video's whole purpose is that the viewer actually retains and applies the material afterward - unlike entertainment content, where a viewer who tunes out for thirty seconds just misses a joke, a learner who tunes out of a compliance or skills module has failed the actual point of the content. If English is a second or third language for a meaningful share of your workforce or program participants, English-only captions are quietly increasing the number of people who complete a module without absorbing it.

Subtitles vs. a full dub for training content specifically

For most training material, subtitles are usually the right first investment - they're faster and cheaper to produce, and a lot of training content is watched in shared or noisy environments (an office floor, a community hall) where reading along already happens naturally. A full dub becomes worth the extra cost when the material is dense, technical, or safety-critical - the kind of content where a learner needs to be listening, not splitting attention between reading and watching a demonstration.

Either way, the same accuracy bar applies as anything else worth teaching correctly: a real editor checking the translation against the source before it ships, not just an automated first pass assumed to be good enough.