Translating Surveys

Introduction

Refiner comes equipped with a powerful survey translation system. On this page we’ll describe how to create dictionaries, translate your surveys and how to set the user language client side.

Please note: The multi-language translation system described on this page is only accessible for customers on a Growth or Enterprise plan at the moment. Please contact us if you want to use it on a different subscription plan. As an alternative, you can also simply duplicate a survey for each language and translate all text items.

Translation Hub

The Translation Hub allows to manage all language dictionaries and translations in one central place. It is located in the settings of your Refiner environment.

Each text fragment used in your surveys is represented as a table row, with the original text value on the left. This list is generated automatically and includes all text fragments that are currently used in your surveys. You can think of this list as your default dictionary.

Each language that you are using in your survey campaigns is represented by a column. You can create as many languages as needed.

The combination of the text fragments list and your dictionaries creates a matrix that allows you to quickly translate all your surveys and see which translations are still missing.

Create dictionaries

As a first step, we recommend to create a dictionary for each language that you want to use in your survey campaign.

A dictionary consists of a name, a unique identifier, the text reading direction (LTR / RTL), and the actual text translations.

We recommend to use two letter ISO 639-1 language codes (e.g. en, fr, de, …) as the language identifiers of your dictionaries.

If you use the standardized two letter format, Refiner will be automatically detect the preferred web browser language of your users and the translation will work seamlessly.

You can also use custom language codes, for example if your app stores languages codes in a different format. In this case, you’ll need to set the language identifiers for each user when identifying them with our web-client (see below) or mobile SDKs.

Translation Matrix

Once you’ve created all dictionaries, it’s time to translate each text fragment. You can either translate text fragments row by row, or work your way through the matrix column by column.

The final goal is to provide a translation for each fragment/language combination. To make your life easier, missing translations are marked with a red background.

You don’t need to provide translations for each combination to make the translation feature work. If a translation for a text fragment is not available, the default language of the survey is used as fallback

Don’t forget to hit save in the bottom of the page to make sure none of your translations get lost.

Import & Export Dictionaries

In the top section of the Translation Matrix you’ll find an option to export and import dictionaries as JSON files. Using the JSON import and export function allows you to manage translations in a dedicated software tool, or outsource the translation process to third parties without giving them access to your Refiner account.

In-place Translation

Next to translating text items with the Translation Matrix as described above, you can also translate surveys while creating them.

The In-place Translation option allows for you to quickly adjust and verify translations while you are are creating a survey.

If your user profile has the necessary rights and if at least one dictionary was created, you’ll see an earth symbol next to all form inputs with translatable text. The symbol appears in green if translations for all languages are available and in red when translations are missing.

When you click on the earth symbol, you’ll access a modal to translate this particular text item. The translation you provide in the modal will be used for all surveys in your environment that are using the exact same text.

Preview translated surveys

When the translation feature is enabled for your account, you’ll see a language switcher in the top right section of the survey editor. Changing the language here will automatically translate the survey preview.

Set user language

This step is only necessary if you are using custom language codes in your application. If you are using ISO 639-1 language as mentioned above, the translation feature will automatically detect the preferred web browser language of your user.

If you are using custom language codes, you have two options to set the language of your user with our web-client. The first option is to explicitly set the language for a user with our “setLocale” method:

_refiner('setLocale', 'the-dictionary-identifier');

The second option works by including a “locale” trait when identifying your user. This option works well if you are using our client with Google Tag Manager.

_refiner('identifyUser', {
    id: 'your-user-id',
    locale: 'en_EN',
    another_trait: 'something',
    ...
});