Use our Translations feature to create surveys in multiple languages so that respondents can answer the questions in the language indicated in the survey or page URL, or in the language of the respondent's browser
With multilingual surveys, you can:
translate your survey manually or automatically with Google and DeepL;
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 👉
Translate the questions automatically with Google and DeepL
If you don't wish to translate the questions manually, click on Automatic translation using Google and DeepL, then on Start translation, and you'll see your survey in the new languages within seconds.
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.
The Default language can influence the survey questions you see in the Question Library. For example, saving your questions to the Library from a survey with Default language set to English, will only let you use those questions in other surveys with the same Default Language.
After clicking Start translation, translated questions will be added right away. If you want to change the translated text, you can click on one of the questions and edit it.
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 Start translation, 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 will be translated to. You can change it here as well.
The Default language can influence the survey questions you see in the Question Library. For example, saving your questions to the Library from a survey with the Default language set to English will only let you use those questions in other surveys with the same Default Language.
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. You can also see the original questions on the left side, so you don't have to switch between tabs.
Translate the questions with Translation Files
You can collaborate on the survey translation with your team without adding them to your Survicate account.
📌 Available in Email or Shareable link, and in Website or in-product surveys.
Select Manual translation, then on Start translation, and type in the questions and answer choices yourself:
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, or after you add or remove questions and/or answer options. You'll have to either add a Google translation again or update the existing translation yourself.
💡 You can delete a language by clicking on the 🗑 icon next to it.
Step 2. Adjust the URLs
You can indicate what language the survey should be shown in by editing:
The survey link for the email or shareable link surveys;
The targeted page URL for website surveys;
❗ This option does not apply to mobile surveys - if you're launching a mobile survey, continue to the next step.
❗ If you wish to show your survey in the respondents' browser language, you can skip this step. If no language is indicated via URLs, each respondent will see the survey in the language of their browser, or in the default survey language if your survey doesn't contain a translation in this language.
Email or shareable link survey
You can create separate links for each language in your survey by adding a language parameter to the survey link or the HTML code.
❗ Please note that it's not possible to translate the language of a question that's embedded in the email body. The question in the email is always displayed in the survey's default language.
1. From the Share tab of your survey, copy the survey link:
2. Paste the link to any text editor, and add an '&lang=" identifier to the link. For example, for French it would be &lang=fr, for German &lang=de, etc.
3. You can create multiple links for the same survey, a separate link for each translation.
Website or in-product survey
You can indicate which language of the survey should be shown by adding a language indicator to your page URL. This way, you can show different languages of the same survey on dedicated pages.
Available language indicators
You can use various language indicators in the URLs to show a specific survey translation on a specific URL. Supported indicators are:
country-code top-level domain (https://www.example.fr/, https://www.example.de/)
path segment (example.com/it/page)
query parameter (example.com/page.html?lang=pl)
We will show a survey in that language, instead of the browser language, if the necessary translations are added in the survey. Prioritization (highest to lowest) of the indicators is:
Query parameter (options: lang/language/locale)
Path segment
Country-code TLD
Browser language
Path segments' rules
The language code has to be included in the first path segment - in the first /.../ section after the main URL.
If your URL is example.com/it/page ➡️ we'll show the survey in Italian
If your URL is example.com/products/it/details ➡️ we'll ignore the "it" because it's not in the first segment, and we'll show the survey in the browser's language.
If the first path segment is combined, like example.com/en-DE ➡️ the language will be determined by the first part - in this case, we'll show the survey in English.
In case of a top-level domain of a multilingual country (like Belgium or Switzerland), if your URL is example.be, and there is no other language indicator in the URL, like a path segment or query parameter, the survey will be displayed in the browser language. To manually specify the language, add a path segment to your URL, like example.be/fr or example.be/nl or a query parameter, like example.be/page.html?lang=fr.
💡 If you want to show your survey on all pages where the Survicate code is installed, just in different languages, you don't need to provide the URLs with the country codes anywhere in the survey targeting in Survicate.
However, if you want to specify URLs where the survey should appear (for example, only URLs in a specific language), make sure to either list all URLs with the country codes or use the option to trigger a survey on all URLs starting with:
❗ For those users who are using our NPM package, language indicators are available starting from version 28.13.1.
Step 3. Launch your survey
Email or shareable link survey
Send 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 embed the survey's first question in the email's body, it 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 in the language you specified in the code by adding &lang=... to the links, or in the browser's language.
Website or in-product survey
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 primary language.
💡If you want to exclude the website or app visitors whose language is not supported by your survey, you can set it up in Target ➡️ Audience:
Mobile app survey
Start the Mobile survey in the Launch tab. In general, the survey will appear to your app's users in the language of the app, which they set up in their mobile phone's settings.
❗️If your mobile app supports changing the language within the app (independently from the system settings), you can adjust the survey language by calling a special method (starting from SDK version 6.3.0). Read more about this method in our developers' documentation for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity.
Step 3. 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 in.
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.
FAQ
How does AI follow-up work with the translated version?
The follow-up question will be displayed in the survey language the participating respondents used.
📞 If you have questions about multilingual surveys, feel free to contact our team via chat or email: support@survicate.com
Related search queries: multilanguage