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Tomedes Brings TUMO's Creative Technology Curriculum to Spanish and Basque-Speaking Teens

TUMO is changing what free education looks like for teenagers. Tomedes helped make sure that change could happen in Spanish and Basque.

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Our Customers
TUMO

35,000+

Active students worldwide

20+

Countries with TUMO centers

Learning targets localized

Target languages delivered

About TUMO

Free, world-class creative technology education

TUMO Center for Creative Technologies is a free after-school program operating in 20+ countries, giving teenagers aged 12 to 18 access to world-class creative technology education at no cost. Founded in Yerevan, Armenia, TUMO now serves 35,000+ active students across centers in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

Students learn at their own pace across 14 focus areas (animation, game development, robotics, filmmaking, music, programming, and more) guided by a proprietary learning platform called the TUMO Path that builds a personalized curriculum based on each student's interests. There are no fees, no grades, and no entrance exams.

TUMO's expansion into Spanish and Basque-speaking regions brought a new translation challenge: a substantial body of instructional, technical, and creative curriculum content that had to work for teenagers learning complex skills, often for the first time, in a self-directed environment.

The Challenge

Three problems to solve before a single word was translated

Translating a curriculum at this scale is a different kind of project from translating a single document. The content is heterogeneous (technical, instructional, and creative) and had to work for teenagers learning complex skills, often for the first time, in a self-directed environment. Three challenges needed careful planning first.

Subject-matter diversity across 14 disciplines

A translator who handles robotics documentation fluently may not have the vocabulary or register for music production or filmmaking. Programming content needs precise technical terminology where an error does not just confuse a student, it breaks the learning activity. Each subject area needed linguists with direct familiarity in that field.

A register built for teenage self-directed learners

TUMO's curriculum is designed to feel like exploration, not coursework. It speaks directly to students in plain language and avoids the formal register of traditional educational materials. Preserving that warmth and directness in Spanish and Basque needed linguists who understood the audience, not just the language.

Basque as a minority language

Spanish was a large, well-resourced challenge. Basque (Euskara) was different entirely: a language isolate whose structure and vocabulary share nothing with Spanish, French, or any neighboring language. The pool of translators with both Basque fluency and creative-technology vocabulary is narrow, requiring targeted recruitment from Tomedes' specialist network.

Why Tomedes

Specialist teams for heterogeneous content

TUMO selected Tomedes for its ability to assemble specialist linguist teams across heterogeneous content domains and its experience with large-scale educational localization. The Basque component in particular required Tomedes to source translators combining technical subject-matter depth with Basque competence, a pairing that is rare in the professional translation market. A dedicated project manager structured the workflow so each of the 14 learning targets was matched to a linguist with relevant expertise, with a cross-domain editorial review at the end of each content cluster before delivery.

The Solution

A layered approach to quality at scale

A domain-matched linguist team across 14 subject areas

Rather than using a generalist team, Tomedes built a domain-matched roster for both languages. Programming and robotics went to linguists with software backgrounds, animation and design to translators with creative-technology experience, and music production to a linguist with audio production familiarity. This kept both the technical vocabulary and the instructional logic of each activity accurate in Spanish and Basque.

A register review layer to preserve TUMO's student-facing voice

After the main translation pass, senior editors in both languages ran a dedicated register review focused on the student-facing voice. Where a technically accurate translation had drifted into a more formal tone than the source intended, they revised it to restore the direct, accessible voice TUMO's model depends on. This was applied across all 14 subject areas.

Basque specialist sourcing and quality assurance

The Basque team was sourced through targeted outreach in Tomedes' specialist network, prioritizing verified Basque fluency plus subject-matter experience. Most learning targets had direct domain expertise, the rest had adjacent backgrounds plus a technical review pass. A second Basque-fluent linguist reviewed all content before delivery to confirm terminology and register.

Terminology consistency management across subject domains

With content across 14 subject areas and two languages, consistent terminology was a challenge in itself. Terms that appear in several subjects (lighting, composition, rendering, sequencing) had to read the same way in every module, no matter which translator handled it. Tomedes used the Key Terms Glossary tool across both languages to enforce one shared reference and prevent terminology drift.

Interactive and UI content adapted for learning functionality

Much of the curriculum is not narrative text but interactive content: activity prompts, feedback strings, plugin instructions, quiz options, and in-browser guidance. These strings are short, context-dependent, and functionally critical. The Spanish and Basque versions were reviewed in context, not as isolated text, so the curriculum worked as one coherent learning experience rather than a set of separately translated parts.

The Result

Curriculum ready in language built for the students who use it

When TUMO's new centers opened, every module, from animation briefs to robotics debugging guides to filmmaking project labs, was available in language written for its learners. Not translated for a generic audience, but localized for teenagers encountering these subjects for the first time in a self-directed environment.

Learning targets localized in both languages

Terminology issues raised in post-deployment review

Curriculum readiness delays during expansion

To illustrate what that localization looks like in practice, here is the same instructional voice carried into both target languages: direct and natural, never converted for a generic audience.

SpanishGame lighting module

“Las decisiones que tomamos sobre la iluminación en un juego determinan su atmósfera general y pueden mejorar (o arruinar) tanto el aspecto visual como el ambiente.”

Localized curriculum output

BasqueShots & composition module

“Plano orokorra, plano zabal izenarekin ere ezaguna, ingurune bat zehazteko erabiltzen da, normalean kokapen bat, eta ikusleei istorioa non gertatzen den erakusten die.”

Localized curriculum output

Both passages retain the direct, instructional voice of the original while reading naturally in their target language. A student in Bilbao or Buenos Aires encounters content that feels written for them, not converted for them. The full curriculum was delivered across both languages on a phased schedule aligned with TUMO's center-opening timeline, with no subject-area terminology issues raised during the post-deployment review. TUMO's mission is a world where any teenager, regardless of geography, income, or academic history, has access to world-class creative technology education. Tomedes' role was to make sure the language was never the barrier.

We needed to tackle a particularly demanding project: producing high-quality, heavy content in both Castilian Spanish and Basque. Finding an agency with truly native, professional Basque translators was a real challenge. Basque is unique and complex, and anything less than native experts was not an option. Tomedes rose to that challenge.
From the first interaction, Tomedes stood out for their responsiveness. Questions were answered quickly and clearly, which immediately inspired confidence. Knowing our content would be handled by qualified native professionals gave us complete confidence. They consistently delivered on time, and whenever we gave feedback the team responded swiftly and constructively. That flexibility and commitment to quality has made Tomedes a genuinely reliable partner.

Hasmik AkopianLaunch Manager, TUMO International

Project Snapshot

Key details

Document type

Educational curriculum: self-learning activities, workshop guides, project labs, and instructional content across 14 learning targets

Language pair

English → Spanish and Basque

Industry

Education / Nonprofit

Service type

Localization and register adaptation

Scope

Full curriculum across 14 subject areas

Certification

ISO 17100:2015

Tools used

Key Terms Glossary · Consistency Checker · Translation Quality Assessment

Expanding a learning program into new language markets?

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