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Translate Survey


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About Translating a Survey

You can add multiple languages to a single survey. Each respondent can see the survey in a language they are comfortable with, and because there is just 1 survey containing all translations, all results will come back into the same dataset. For each survey, you can translate all the questions as well as the survey’s display name and description.

On this page you will learn about the methods available for translating your survey, how to specify which language each respondent sees, and how to analyze data for translated surveys.

Qtip: It’s best practice not to translate a survey until you are completely finished building your survey. If you make edits after uploading translations, make sure you also edit translations accordingly.
Qtip: Survey translation capabilities are only available to certain licenses. Talk to your XM Success Manager or Account Executive if you are interested in this feature.

Translations Overview

You can add, remove, and edit your survey’s translations by going to the Translations tab in the survey builder.
the translations tab on the left hand side of the survey builder

Translation Table

The table on the Translations overview page gives you a quick view of each of your survey’s translations. This table displays:
the overview table showing the different survey translations

  • Language: The translation language. The survey’s base language will have an info icon next to it.
    Qtip: The base language will have empty entries for most fields in this table since it is considered fully translated.
  • Code: The language code for the translation.
  • Visible to respondents: Indicates whether the language is visible to survey takers.
  • Translation progress: Indicates how complete the survey translation is.
  • Questions: Indicates how many questions have been translated out of the total number of survey questions.
  • Other content: Indicates if the survey display name and description have been translated.
Qtip: If a field has an arrow next to the name, you can click on the field to sort the table.

Translation Options

Click the 3 dots next to a translation to see a list of options:
opening the options menu for a translation

Base Language

Qtip: It’s best practice to ensure that the base survey language is the language your survey is initially written in. If your base survey language is set to English, but you write your survey in Spanish, respondents will have to choose English from the language dropdown menu to view the survey in Spanish. This only occurs when other language translations are available.

By default, surveys use the language specified in your account settings for any default messages that may appear to respondents as they are taking your survey. However, you can change your survey’s language using the dropdown under Base language.the base language options at the bottom of the translations page

In addition, some languages like Arabic or Hebrew are read from right to left. Changing the survey language will change the way the survey editor displays the survey questions.

Manually Translating a Survey

This section covers how to manually add a survey translation.

  1. Navigate to the Translations tab in the survey builder.
    going to the translations tab and clicking add language
  2. Click Add language.
  3. Select the language(s) you’d like to add.
    choosing languages to add

    Qtip: Don’t see a language you’d like to use listed here? You can add it as a custom language to your survey.
  4. Click Add languages.
  5. From the list of added languages, click the language you’d like to add a translation for.clicking on the newly added language
  6. Type the translated content in the Translation language box on the right hand side of the survey builder.
    typing the translations directly in the translations editor, and then publishing changes

    Qtip: Untranslated questions will have a banner to help you identify them.
  7. Use the menu on the left hand side to quickly move between different blocks and questions.
    Qtip: Your survey’s display name and description can be translated by selecting them in this menu.
  8. Click Preview to view a preview version of your survey.
    Qtip: When previewing your survey, you can change the language you take the survey in by using the language dropdown menu in the top right corner.
    the language dropdown for choosing the language the survey is displayed in
  9. When finished, click Publish to save the translations to the live version of your survey.
Qtip: The percentage at the top of the survey builder will tell you how much of your translation is complete.
the percentage showing how far along the translation is
Qtip: Use the Filter at the top of the survey builder to filter for Incomplete items only to help you identify content to translate.
using the filter to select only incomplete items

Automatic Translation

To speed up your survey translation process, you can use an automatic translation on a question-by-question basis. To use automatic translation, click the 3 dots in the top right corner of a question and select Auto-translate.

the auto translate option for a question

Because machine translations are prone to error, we don’t recommend using this as the final translation you share with participants. Rather, this feature can save time when working with a professional translator, as they will only need to clean up this existing translation rather than starting from scratch.

Attention: The Qualtrics Auto-Translate feature uses Google Translate. The text of your survey questions is sent to Google Translate and will be returned in the language you select. Please be aware that your question text may remain on Google servers. The Qualtrics Auto-Translate feature sends only your question text. Respondent data is not sent and remains secure at Qualtrics.
Qtip: If you make edits to your original survey after using this feature, you will need to delete the previously made automatic translations before generating a new set of automatic translations. Text changes are not automatically translated.

Importing a Translation

For some third-party vendors helping you with translations, they may prefer to work in a spreadsheet or in XML rather than typing the translation directly into Qualtrics. The following instructions will allow you to download 1 or all languages in your survey to then be translated and uploaded back into Qualtrics. This will translate your entire survey at once, instead of translating the survey question by question.

To export a translation file

  1. Go to the Translations tab.
    clicking the export translations button
  2. Click the Download translation file button in the top right corner.
  3. Choose the languages you want included in the export.
    choosing the languages to export
  4. Select the file format for the export.
    Qtip: In most cases, we recommend the Unicode Text (Excel) format. Like Unicode CSV, this can be opened in Excel. However, unlike Unicode CSV, Unicode Text understands and preserves non-ASCII characters (for example, 是 or ñ) when saved in Excel. For more information about non-ASCII characters in CSV/TSV files and troubleshooting tips, go to the CSV/TSV Upload Issues support page.
  5. If desired, check the Export untranslated items only. If this option is not checked, then every survey question will be exported.
  6. Click Download.
  7. Open the file in your preferred editor.
    Qtip: Unicode Text (Excel) will open in a text editor by default. Follow the steps below to properly open the file in Excel.

To open a translation file in Excel

  1. Select Open from the File menu of Excel. This step may appear differently depending on the version of Excel you are using.
    Going to File and Open on Excel
  2. Select the file you’ve just downloaded. Depending on your version of Excel, you may need to view all file types, as highlighted below, before your file will appear.
    Opening a txt excel file
  3. Wait until a Text Import Wizard appears, then select Delimited.
    On the text import wizard, the field type is delimited and the import starts at row 1
  4. Select Tab as the delimiter on the second step.
    Delimiters is set to tab
  5. Make no changes on the third step and select Finish.
    finish button on lower-right

Using the Downloaded Translation File

Unicode Text (Excel) and Unicode CSV both have the following layout in Excel:

CSV of translation file

In these files, a row is provided for each item to be translated, with a column for the language downloaded.  The elements in the PhraseID column should not be modified from their original format.

XML can be opened in your preferred text editor and will have the following layout:

An xml doc of translations

In XML, an element is provided for each item to be translated. A child element is provided for each language downloaded.

To import a translation file

Qtip: If your import file is missing rows, then those corresponding translations will be unaffected. You can use this method to update parts of your translation while leaving other parts unchanged.
  1. Go to the Translations tab.
    clicking the upload translations button
  2. Click the Upload translation file button.
  3. Click Choose file and select the file on your computer.
    choosing a file to upload

    Qtip: The translation file upload is compatible with the same file types supported via download. This includes XML, Unicode text (Excel), CSV, and TSV.
  4. Review the translation for any errors.
    reviewing the translation within the import window
  5. Click Apply.

Custom Languages

If the language you’d like to translate your survey into is not available, you can add it as a custom language. This section will cover how to create a custom language.

  1. Follow the steps in Manually Translating a Survey to add translations to your survey.
  2. When choosing what languages to add, scroll down to the bottom of the list and click Create language.
    choosing create language from the language selection window
  3. Give your language a Display name. This is the name respondents will see in the language dropdown when taking the survey.
    new window where you set up your custom language
  4. Enter a Language code. This code can be used to specify the language a respondent sees the survey in by default. It can also be used to show custom content for different languages.
    Qtip: Your language code can’t be a code already used by another language.
    Example: If I wanted to add a code for French (Belgian), my code would be FR-BE.
  5. Choose an Alternate language. This language will be used for questions missing custom language translations, and for general messages that can’t be translated into new languages. (For example, error or validation messages.)
  6. Click Create language.

Specifying the Participant Language

Once your survey is translated, how do you ensure participants see it in the appropriate language? Qualtrics provides the following 4 options to simplify this process.

Automatic Language Detection

When a participant starts your survey, Qualtrics will check their web browser settings to see which language they use to browse the internet. If your survey is translated into their internet browser language, this translation will automatically be used, placing most participants in the correct translation with no additional work needed on your end.

Languages window

Surveys taken on the above web browser will load in Brazilian Portuguese, if a Brazilian Portuguese translation is available.

Specifying Language in a Contact List

If you know your participants’ preferred languages ahead of time, you can upload this information as part of your contact list, in a column titled Language.

CSV of a contact list where there's a column for Language. English is indicated as EN

In the language column of your contact list, you’ll insert the appropriate language code for each participant, as outlined in the Available Language Codes section below.

Creating a Survey Link for Each Language

If you are distributing your survey anonymously, you can still specify each participant’s language by creating a different survey link for each language. This can be useful if you are posting your survey to a website that caters to multiple languages.

To create a survey link for each language, copy the anonymous link and append “?Q_Language=” to the end, followed by the appropriate language code from the table below. The newly constructed link will look like this:

http://survey.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cM7uFWAef1IB?Q_Language=ZH-S

Qtip: If your survey link already has a question mark (?) in it, you’ll need to add an ampersand (&) first instead of a question mark (?). See more on the Query Links support page.

When the link is accessed, the survey will display in the indicated language.

A query string at the end of a survey link that says question mark, then Q, underscore, Language (captilzaied), equals ES (capital letters)

“?Q_Language=ES” has been added to the end of this survey URL. Because ES is the language code for Spanish, participants who use this URL will see the survey in Spanish.

Participant Language Selection

Some participants may want to take the survey in a language other than the 1 selected for them. On the top-right of any translated survey, participants will have the opportunity to switch to a new language at any point in the survey. This language dropdown menu is automatically inserted into every page of the survey for your convenience.

Upper-right of survey has a language selection dropdown menu

Available Language Codes

Whenever you need to specify the language for a participant, whether in a contact list, query string, or translation upload, you will need to use the language codes specified below. If you use a language code that is not included on this list, you must create a custom language set to that code, or else that language code will not work.

Qtip: Please note that these are the languages available for surveys, and do not necessarily reflect the list of languages our platform is translated into. For a list of platform languages, see the User Settings page.
Qtip: Your language codes must be capitalized in order to function properly. Be sure to capitalize the language code when adding it to your survey.
SQI Albanian NL Dutch KAN Kannada RO Romanian
AR Arabic EN-GB English – UK KAZ  Kazakh (Cyrilic) RU Russian
HYE Armenian EN English – US KM Khmer SR Serbian
ASM Assamese EO Esperanto KO Korean SIN Sinhalese
AZ-AZ Azeri/Azerbaijani (Latin script) ET Estonian LV Latvian SK Slovak
ID Bahasa Indonesia FI Finnish LT Lithuanian SL Slovenian
MS Bahasa Malaysia FR French MK Macedonian ES-ES Spanish EU
BEL Belarusian FR-CA French Canadian MAL Malayalam ES Spanish LATAM
BN Bengali KAT Georgian MAR Marathi SW Swahili
BS Bosnian DE German MN Mongolian SV Swedish
PT-BR Brazilian Portuguese EL Greek SR-ME Montenegrin TGL Tagalog
BG Bulgarian GU Gujarati MY Myanmar/Burmese TA Tamil
CA Catalan HE Hebrew NE Nepali TEL Telugu
CEB Cebuano HI Hindi NO Norwegian TH Thai
ZH-S Chinese (Simplified) HU Hungarian ORI Odia/Oriya TR Turkish
ZH-T Chinese (Traditional) HIL Ilonggo/Hiligaynon FA Persian UK Ukrainian
HR Croatian IT Italian PL Polish UR Urdu
CS Czech ISL Icelandic PT Portuguese VI Vietnamese
DA Danish JA Japanese PA-IN Punjabi CY Welsh
Qtip: Are you planning to distribute using language codes and wonder how that is related to respondent browser settings? Language codes in a contact list or query string are prioritized over the respondent’s browser settings. Regardless of the language they set in their browser, if you specify a language code for the respondent to take the survey in, then the survey will begin in that language. The respondent will still have the ability to manually change their survey language to any of the available translations. (Note that in EX projects, the browser language overrides the language code you set. To ensure the language code is used instead of the browser language, add a ?QLanguage=Code query string to your survey link.)

Custom Content for Each Language

On certain studies, you may have survey questions reserved for a specific language. For example, a question asking respondents to rate you with a letter grade may only make sense in English speaking countries.

A survey set to English

Qualtrics stores the language participants are using to take the survey in an embedded data field named Q_Language. Q_Language can be used in display logic and branch logic to ensure participants only see questions appropriate for their language.

Display Logic that says the question will be displayed if Embedded Data Q_Language is equal to EN

A question with this display logic would only show for English-speaking participants.

Data Analysis for Translated Surveys

Data from all languages will flow back into the same dataset for easy reporting. Qualtrics tracks which language participants used to take the survey, and this information is stored in an embedded data field called Q_Language. To have this information reported in your results along with the survey questions, add an embedded data field to your survey flow named Q_Language.

An Embedded Data element in the Survey Flow named Q_Language with no value

In the Reports tab and the downloaded dataset, Q_Language can be reported along with your survey questions.

A survey language bar chart in the reports

Qtip: You might need to change the format of the Q_Language embedded data to a multi-value text set to be able to make a bar chart like the chart pictured above.

Q_Language can also be used for filtering survey results in both Reports and Data and Analysis, as well as for filtering downloading data.

Filter on a report that says data will only be included in charts and tables if Q_Language is equal to ES

A report with this filter would only include respondents with their language set to European Spanish.

Deleting a Translation

This section covers how to delete a survey translation.

  1. Go to the Translations tab.
    selecting a language and clicking delete translation
  2. Click the 3 dots next to the translation you want to remove.
  3. Click Delete translations.
    Qtip: If you want to hide the translation from survey takers but not delete it, use the Hide from respondents option instead.
    choosing the "hide from respondents" option to disable a translation
  4. Review the pop-up message and click Delete translations.
    the confirmation window for deleting a translation

Translating Different Types of Surveys

You can translate about every type of project where you customize a survey. This includes:

Keep in mind that this page describes how to translate surveys. The steps to translate other areas of the product, such as messages, dashboards, and reports, will vary from what’s described on this page.  To learn more, see Languages in Qualtrics.

FAQs