FutureLearn’s focus is on English-speaking learners. 

We offer some limited support for non-English language courses. See the specific list of languages it is possible to build courses in below.  

An English version is required for every non-English language course. 

The English version should start first, to allow for the optimisation of the Course Description Page and Quality Assurance (QA) feedback to be utilised in the non-English version. Non-English language courses do not undergo our Quality Assurance review or receive CDP creation support (copy and image). 

The FutureLearn platform is in English 

All platform language, automated emails, instructional text, navigation, FAQs, certificates, etc. are always in English and cannot be amended. Our moderation is also only available in English, we respond to all learner feedback in English. We have no resources to offer Quality Assurance in other languages. 

Please contact your Partnership Manager if you would like to talk about running a course in a language other than English.

Non-English language courses are unlisted 

This means they do not appear on Internet searches or via FutureLearn listings pages.

Courses in Spanish and French are being publicly listed. If this goes well we will extend this to more languages. All Spanish and French courses are appearing on collection pages: French and Spanish. 

Creating a course shell for a non-English Language course  

1. Submit your course proposal for the English version of the course. 

2. Wait for the proposal to be approved

3. When you receive the course shell for the English version, create your own shell for the non-English version.

4. Follow the steps on the invite only (private) course model page, to create a course shell. Be sure to add the language to the course slug (URL). Course Creator will not allow two identical slugs.

5. Select if you would like the course to be invite-only (private). This means you can send invites to specific learners via Learning Manager or select that the course is unlisted, if you wish to share the URL once the CDP is published. 

6. Build the course as normal. As mentioned above, it is preferable that you receive QA feedback for the English version before populating the non-English course shell. Once the English version has been QAed you can import the course content into the non-English Language shell. If the course structure will be the same for both, this will save time.  

A portfolio team will be in touch with you about the English course.

All queries relating to the non-English version including the request to publish the Course Description Page should be made to courses@futurelearn.com. 

Languages enabled within Course Creator

Below is a list of non-English languages it’s possible to develop courses in because you can insert the characters of the language into Course Creator.  

• Burmese
• Catalan
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Dutch
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Indonesian
• Irish
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Slovak
• Spanish
• Swahili
• Thai
• Turkish
• Welsh

Right to Left Languages

As FutureLearn is built for the English language, there is very limited support for RTL languages, such as Arabic. You can use the following HTML code to activate right to left text:

dir="rtl" 

However, this overwrites any markdown formatting, and doesn't work for every step type on the platform. Also, as with all non-English courses, we can offer very little support in building these courses. 

As the platform cannot offer the same experience in RTL languages to learners, we'd recommend that all courses should only be produced in the languages listed above.

Adding non-English language resources to English courses  

We welcome partners adding more support for non-native English speakers to their courses by offering alternative subtitles and downloadable PDFs. 

In your courses offered in English we prefer that video and audio are in English although it is possible to include videos/audios in other languages as long as there is always an English language VTT file of subtitles and transcripts uploaded. Please note that a non English language file will generate subtitles but not an interactive transcript, so a PDF transcript will need to be added if required.

Terminology on this page that you aren’t familiar with? Check out our glossary. 

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