About Multilingual Surveys
With multilingual surveys, you can offer your survey in multiple languages by adding your own translations. Respondents can choose their preferred language themselves, open the survey in a specific language via a link, or receive it in a predefined language when invited.
In this article, you’ll learn how to translate your survey and control the survey language for each respondent.
We recommend translating your survey after it is fully built, as any changes made afterwards will also need to be updated in the translations.
Adding Survey Languages
You can add multiple languages when creating your survey, but you can also add them at any time after the survey has been created.
To add a new language to your survey:
- Go to your survey and select settings in the side menu. If the menu is closed, click the menu icon to open it.
- Under languages, you'll see the current language(s) your survey has. Click on them.
- Select the language(s) you want to add and click save.
Once the languages have been added, you can begin translating your survey.
Translate Survey Elements and Background Variables
You can view and edit your survey elements in each language by going to your survey, selecting content on the side menu, and switching the language in the upper right corner.
Any survey elements in your content overview that have not been translated will be marked with an alert icon:
To translate your survey elements and background variables, use the translation tool in your survey settings. This provides an overview of all survey content, including any background variables you have added. To translate your survey:
- Go to your survey and select settings in the side menu. If the menu is closed, click on the menu icon to open it first. Under languages, click on translations.
- In the upper right corner, choose the language you want to translate. The left column shows the default language, and the right column shows the selected language.
- All elements that have not yet been translated will display “Translation missing” in light gray.
- Click on the element you want to translate in the right column and enter the translation manually or use the AI translation option. Read more about AI Translations of Survey Texts here.
- Your changes will be saved immediately.
You can easily navigate to the next item by using the Tab key on your keyboard.
You can use the Translation tool to easily change texts in the default language as well.
Translate Survey Messages
If you're sharing your multilingual survey via email, organization, or Digital Post, you need to translate your survey message. Make sure to create an invitation message and a reminder message.
When you create a message for a survey that already includes multiple languages, the message will automatically be generated in those languages. However, if you add a new language after creating your message, you will need to translate the message for that language manually.
To translate your survey message:
- Go to your survey and select responses in the side menu. If the menu is closed, click the menu icon to open it first.
- Click on the options menu and select messages.
- Select the message you want to translate.
- Under Text, you will see the languages available in your survey. Select the language you want to translate.
- Click on the text field and enter your translation. A preview will be shown on the right.
To view the default language while translating, click on the translate icon.
Specifying the Respondent Language
Once your survey and messages have been translated, you can define which language each respondent will see. This ensures that both the survey and any invitations or reminders are presented in the appropriate language.
There are two ways to specify a respondent’s language:
SPECIFY LANGUAGE IN THE RESPONDENT LIST
If you know your respondents’ preferred languages in advance, you can include this information in your respondent list. To do this, add a Language column to your CSV file and enter the appropriate language code for each respondent.
When you send your survey using this list, each respondent will receive the survey and messages in the specified language. Respondents can still switch to another language if needed.
The table below shows the available language codes you can use.
| ar | Arabic | nl | Dutch | de | German | ko | Korean | pb | Portuguese (Brazil) | sps | Spanish (LATAM) |
| bn | Bengali | en | English (US) | el | Greek | lv | Latvian | pa | Punjabi | se | Swedish |
| bg | Bulgarian | gb | English (UK) | hi | Hindi | lt | Lithuanian | ro | Romanian | th | Thai |
| my | Burmese | et | Estonian | hu | Hungarian | ms | Malay | ru | Russian | ti | Tigrinya |
| zh | Chinese (Simplified) | fa | Farsi | is | Icelandic | ml | Malayalam | sr | Serbian | tr | Turkish |
| zht | Chinese (Traditional) | fi | Finnish | id | Indonesian | no | Norwegian (Bokmål) | sd | Sindhi | uk | Ukranian |
| hr | Croatian | nld | Flemish | it | Italian | nn | Norwegian (Nynorsk) | sl | Slovenian | ur | Urdu |
| cs | Czech | fr | French | ja | Japanese | pl | Polish | sk | Slovak | vi | Vietnamese |
| da | Danish | fy | Frisian | km | Khmer | pt | Portuguese (Portugal) | es | Spanish (Spain) |
SPECIFY LANGUAGE USING CUSTOM LINKS
You can also define the survey language by using custom links that open the survey in a specific language.
Each custom link is configured for a specific language, meaning that anyone who uses the link will see the survey in that language. If multiple languages are available, respondents can still switch to another language themselves.
Learn how to create and use custom links for your survey.
Removing Languages
You can always remove a language from your survey, all you have to do is:
- Go to your survey and select settings on the side menu. If the menu is closed, click on the menu icon to open it first.
- Under languages, you'll see the current language(s) your survey has. Click on them.
- Deselect the language(s) you want to remove and click save.