Dive Summary:
- Online learning marketplace Udemy on Tuesday announced support for nine languages—Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Russian and Turkish—across its entire site, increasing access for students worldwide to take its more than 8,000 courses.
- Instructors who speak those languages will also now be able to launch courses targeted at native speakers.
- Additionally, the site just registered its one-millionth student, and support for Korean and Hindi is expected to launch later this summer
From the press release:
... With sitewide language support, all text on the Udemy site appears in the visitor’s native language, based on his or her location. The translation enables students to more easily navigate the site to learn about courses. Meanwhile, instructors can now post courses in their native languages and more easily attract students who speak the same language.
“The internationalization of Udemy is a deeply personal project for me,” said Udemy CEO Eren Bali. “I grew up in a single room schoolhouse in Southeastern Turkey, and while the internet helped me lift myself up in ways I never imagined possible, so much of the great learning content available online is only in English. I couldn’t be more excited to be part of a force that helps remove this language barrier for good, and I hope by localizing Udemy into these 11 languages, we will be one step closer to truly empowering any expert anywhere in the world to give back and teach the next generation.”
50% of Udemy students visit the site from outside the U.S. and Udemy already offers more than 600 courses in Spanish and almost 150 courses in Portuguese. Several non-native English speaking instructors have earned more than $10,000 teaching courses in other languages on the platform, including Madrid-based instructor Fernando Rodriguez, whose Spanish-language iOS programming course has earned $32,000 in its first two months on Udemy. ...