SmartSurvey allows you to publish multilingual surveys. Respondents can select their preferred language before the survey begins and when you receive the responses they will all be presented within the one set of results.
SmartSurvey supports all languages worldwide. The Language Templates offered when you create your survey include pre-defined translation of common features and buttons for some of the more popular ones (such as the Next and Previous buttons).
If the language you need isn't available as a template or if you'd prefer to change the wording within the template you can edit any of these messages if you create your own translation.
The Language Templates do not include translation of your question text and other descriptions. This content is translated by the user and uploaded to SmartSurvey as a new translation. It is not translated by SmartSurvey.
We strongly advise that you only create a translation when you are ready to publish your survey
Setting Up a New Translation
- Check that your survey is complete, and ready to publish
- Whilst in the Design page, hover over Options located in the white navigation bar
- Click Translations
- Click Add New Translation
- Type a name for your new translation
- Select Copy existing translation, or Copy from another survey, if you want to use an existing translation as a template - otherwise click New to create a new translation
- In the Language Template drop-down menu select the pre-defined language template you want to use
- Click Add
Customising a Translation
Click Customise Text next to a translation to edit the wording. The menu items across the top of the page allow you to control different parts of your survey:
| Survey |
Create translation text for your page titles, questions and answer text |
| Messages and Buttons |
Customise the pre-defined translations for the alerts and buttons within your survey |
| Features |
Customise the wording of the alert messages within your survey |
| Question Types |
Customise the wording for specific question types |
| Misc |
Customise miscellaneous text within your survey |
| Reports |
Customise headings and text used in reports created using your survey data |
Display Settings
Under the list of survey translations, you will see a Display Settings section. This defines how users will select the translation they want to use:
| None |
Displays the default language, with no option to change it |
| Selection Screen – List |
Respondents must select their preferred language from a list of links before the survey will load |
| Selection Screen – Flags |
Respondents must select their preferred language from a series of flags before the survey will load |
| Selection Screen – Drop Down |
Respondents must select their preferred language from a drop-down menu before the survey will load |
| Load Default Language – Selection Drop Down at Top Right of Screen |
Opens the survey in the default language, and provides a drop-down menu of language choices |
Please note - When a multilingual survey is set up to use one of the above options to allow the respondent to select language, there is an issue where, if a respondent tries to complete the survey more than once at the same time (in seperate browser tabs), then only the first-completed response will be stored. If you think this is a likely way that your respondents will interact with your survey, then we recommend warning them about this, or distributing the survey using language-specific tracking links.