Use our Translations feature to create surveys in multiple languages so that respondents can answer the questions in the language of their browser.
With multilingual surveys, you can:
translate your survey manually or automatically with Googl e Translate;
customize the experience for your respondents, increasing response rates by ensuring your contacts see the survey in their language;
save time by creating just one survey instead of multiple ones for each language;
analyze the results for all respondents together in one place.
In this article, you'll learn how to add languages to your survey, translate your questions, and filter the results by language.
📌 Please note that this feature is available for Website or in-product, Email or shareable link, and Mobile (only with Standard design themes) surveys. It is a premium feature included in some of the paid plans. Please visit our Pricing page or reach out to us to learn more.
📌 While our surveys are available in multiple languages, our user interface and documentation are currently only offered in English.
Step 1. Add languages to your survey
Go to the Create tab of your survey and click on Translations:
A pop-up window will appear where you can select which languages you want in your survey. You can select more than one at a time, or if you're not sure which ones you need, you can select just one and always add more later.
💬 The maximum number of languages a survey can be translated to is currently 50. If you need more languages, please let us know in chat 👉
Step 2. Translate the questions manually
After choosing which languages you want to display your survey, it's time to translate your questions. You can click on Manual translation, then on Submit, and type in the questions and answer choices yourself:
Default language is automatically detected based on your survey's questions, and it's the language will the one that the survey results are translated to. You can change it here as well.
To add a translation, click on one of the questions to activate the editing option.
The layout of the Translations tab allows you to switch between the newly added languages easily, and you can see the original questions on the left side, so you don't have to switch between tabs.
You can also delete a language by clicking on the 🗑 icon next to it.
Step 3. Translate the questions automatically with Google Translate
If you don't wish to translate the questions manually, click on Google Translation, then on Submit, and you'll see your survey in the new languages within seconds.
If you want to change the translated text, you can click on one of the questions and edit it, just like in the manual translation.
Step 4. Translate the questions with Translation Files
You can collaborate on the survey translation with your team without the need to add them to your Survicate account.
📌 Available in Email or Shareable link and in Website or in-product surveys.
When using the Translations feature within the survey creator, you can download a translation template with all survey questions and messages that appear on the survey. In the Create ➡️ Translations tab, select a language you want to add, click on Use translation files, and choose to Download template.
The file can then be imported to a dedicated translation tool or Google Sheets doc, depending on how the translation team prefers to work. It will include a column for each language you added to your survey.
Once the translation process is finished, the translated file can be re-uploaded to Survicate.
❗️The files should be uploaded in the .csv format.
The survey content gets translated automatically 🎉.
Please note that translations are not automatically updated after any changes in your survey's text. You'll have to either add a Google translation again or update the existing translation yourself.
Step 5. Launch your survey
Share your Email/Shareable link survey with a link or embed it in an email. You only need to do this once, and respondents who receive your survey and click on the link will see the questions in the language of their browser.
Please note that if you're embedding the survey's first question in the email's body, this question will be shown in the survey's original language to everyone. After someone answers the first question, the rest of the survey will open in a new landing page and it will be in the browser's language.
Start the Website or in-product survey in the Launch tab. It will appear to your website visitors either in the language of their browser or in the default language.
💡If you want to exclude the website and app visitors whose language is not supported by your survey from seeing it, you can set it up in the
Target ➡️ Audience tab:
Start the Mobile survey in the Launch tab. It will appear to your app's visitors based on the app language.
Step 6. Filter results by languages and analyze auto-translated feedback
In the Analyze tab, and in the export, you will see the questions and single- or multiple-choice questions' responses in the original language of your survey, not translated.
Open-text responses will be visible in the language that the respondents provided them.
You can choose to either see all survey responses together or click on Filter and compare the responses of users in different languages:
If your survey has open-ended questions, you can go to the Analyze > Translated responses tab to analyze multilingual feedback from respondents in the survey's default language.
You can read more about this feature here.
Troubleshooting
Some of my respondents don't see the survey in their language
If your survey isn't translated into a person's browser language, they'll see the original version of the survey you created.
The hyperlinks in my translated survey haven't been translated
The hyperlinks you add to your survey will not be translated, rather, they will be copied. If you'd like to direct respondents speaking different languages to different URLs, please modify the translated survey version by updating the links.
Best practices
Create separate surveys to have more control over where and when you show them
If you wish to show a survey to English-speaking respondents after they have scrolled a part of your website and a Spanish survey when someone's about to leave the page, you'll need to create separate Website or in-product surveys. You can then choose to trigger them accordingly based on the browser language in the Target > Audience tab:
If you'd like to run an Intercom Messenger survey in many languages, you will also need to create those surveys separately (one survey per language).
Run surveys in RTL languages with Custom CSS
For right-to-left (RTL) languages, it is possible to change the direction of the text using our Custom CSS feature for some of the survey types.
📞 If you have questions about multilingual surveys, feel free to contact our team via chat or email: support@survicate.com