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.
The Language Templates do not by default include translation of your question text and other descriptions. However, you can now opt to have AI do the translations via a toggle (depending on your plan). Otherwise you can still do it manuallt where the content is translated externally and uploaded to 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, click Translations located in the white navigation bar
- Click the Add New Translation(s) button
- Choose the target languages for the translation from the list
- If you want to use AI to automatically translate the question and answer content as well, set the toggles for the languages you want to do this for.
- Click Add Translation
If you've opted to use AI translation, this may take a little time to process, which will naturally be longer the greater the amount of content - a longer survey with more translations will take more time. You can do other work on the survey while this is taking place though.
Reviewing and Customising a Translation
Click the translation name in the list to access the editor wording. This is where you can review text that's already been translated, edit translations, and enter translated text manually.
Translations generated by AI will be marked with a stars icon.
Once you've access the translation, 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 |
Activating a Translation
A translation will not be usable by respondents unless it is activated. to activate a translation, set the status toggle in the list. The default translation cannot be deactivated.
Refreshing a Translation
If you've made changes to your survey after creating a translation (by any method) then natural;ly those updates will not be reflected in the translations. To update the translation to the latest version of the survey, click "refresh translation" to have AI re-translate the survey in its current state.
Display Settings
Above the list of survey translations, you will see a Display Settings button. Click this to open the display settings, which control 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 – List Excluding Native Names |
The same as above but it only shows the English names of the other languages, not the native names. |
| Selection Screen – Flags |
Respondents must select their preferred language from a series of flags before the survey will load |
| Selection Screen – List & Drop Down Menu |
Respondents must select their preferred language from a list of languages at the start of their response but there is also a drop-down menu at the top-right of every page where they can change their choice at any point. |
| 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 in the top-right of every page where they can change their choice at any point |
The selection screen will be bypassed if a survey is set to load a specific translation via the URL "lang" variable.
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.