Translating a survey
If your survey is answered by people who speak different languages, you can write its questions in each of them. Everyone then fills in the same form in their own language, and their answers all land in the same place.
Table of contents
Translating the survey
- Open the form editor.
- Pick the Translate tool from the toolbar at the bottom.
- Fill in the translations and press the save button of each group.
What you translate depends on what is selected in the form, so you translate a text while looking at it:
- with nothing selected, the panel shows the name and the description of the survey
- with a question selected, it shows the question text and the question help of that question
Click a question in the preview to translate it, and click an empty spot to go back to the survey’s own texts.
Each group has a row for every language. The first row is the language your survey is written in, and it can’t be edited here: it’s there so you can see what you are translating. To change it, switch back to the Content tool and edit the text in the form itself.
The languages shown are the ones set up on the platform. If a language that you need is missing, contact your platform administrator.
Save before you translate
Translations are stored next to the text they were translated from, so the survey has to be saved before you can translate it. If you switch to the Translate tool with unsaved changes, the panel tells you:
Save your changes before translating.
Press Save in the heading and the translations show up.
Unlike the rest of the editor, translations are not waiting for the Save button in the heading. Each group is saved on its own, with its own save button, the moment you are done with it.
Removing a translation
Clear a field and save the group, and that translation is gone. The language falls back to the text of your base language, so an empty row means “show the original”, not “show nothing”.
Use it when a translation turned out worse than the original, or when a question changed and its old translation no longer says the same thing.
Reordering translated questions
Translations follow their questions. Move a question in the form and its translations move with it, so a survey that was translated into five languages doesn’t come apart the moment you decide question 7 belongs at the top.