Translation
The first thing you might think of when you consider a global audience is translation. Is English your learners' native language? If not, should you give options for the learner to take the training in their first language? In some instances, this might be decided for you. If your company has a policy about translation, that it only needs to be in one language, you don't have to consider this aspect, but maybe you still should. However, if you don't have anyone that speaks the language, then you have to factor in budget. Do you have any budget to cover the costs of translating the language and managing all that comes with that (timing of the training, text variations, etc.)
If translation is something you want to pursue to aid your learners in comprehension of the training, here's where Part 1 of this series comes into play. If you are in a global learning organization, can you source anyone from your broader team who may be located in that region to do the translation? It may not be a part of their job description, but if the goal is to get the learners upskilled in this topic, that may be enough incentive for them to collaborate with you and do either audio translation or text-based translation.
A couple of my favorite tools when thinking about translation in eLearnings in particular are Articulate Rise and Storyline.
In Articulate Rise, you can easily export a file of the entire course, change the text, and then import back into the course to have a fully translated text. Pro tip: make a copy of your course FIRST before exporting, as you won't be able to re-import the translated text into a copy it did not originate from. It's pretty picky, but otherwise a great option!
In Articulate Storyline, there is a similar process, but because of triggers and other variables, there may need to be a bit more manual updates as well. If you're just looking to caption your audio in another language, there's a pretty neat option as well. Once you create your English subtitles, you can export the SRT file, which includes timestamps of where those subtitles were, so the person captioning in another language just needs to update the text and when re-imported, it will line up with the audio still! One limitation of Storyline, however, is that there's no built-in option for multiple subtitles, the way you would think of something like Youtube. There are some workarounds, but Storyline 360 is also constantly being updated by Articulate, so hopefully this will come out in an update in the near future that addresses multiple translations.
Localization
Creating content for global audiences doesn't end at considering language. Are there cultural differences you need to account for in your design? Is the content you are covering relevant? While my company offers products globally, they do work differently in different regions of the world and sometimes "one-size fits all" doesn't apply. Be sure to get input from someone in each location the training will be taken (whether that be by country or region) to make sure that you aren't giving them content that doesn't apply to them (product not available in their region, for example) or is flat out wrong. This can alienate the learner and not only affect their retention of the current training, but the retention and perception of future training you offer, because your department is now the group that sent them a training that wasn't accurate. Why should they take the next training or believe in its content?
Global Focus
Localization is great, but sometimes, you do want a global focus for a course. As with in localization, you will want to determine a set of project team members that represent all regions being trained. From that team, you can determine what content does pertain to a global audience, properly assess how to deliver that content on a global scale (eLearning, virtual training, or having regional trainers deliver in-person training), and identify any content that may need to be pulled from the current training and localized into different regional add-on trainings. Not everything works globally, but with the right team in place, you can determine how regional and global training can work together to create a cohesive program for all your learners.
Do you have any tips for training global learners? Pop them into the comments to start the discussion!