Translations

Translations define the languages a Ask Now uses in its questions, which usually matches the language of their parent survey(s). You can manage all the translated text from Ask Now by tracking the progress of your translation efforts. Using translations entails:
  • Adding the languages the questions are sent into.
  • Exporting the text strings you need to translate.
  • Importing the translated strings back.
  • Previewing the questions to test and validate the translated content.

Translations step in the Ask Now editor.

Base language

Base language defines the language the Ask Now questions is written in. When translating an Ask Now into other languages, base language works as the source language or original language.

To choose a base language, click the dropdown menu and select any of the available language. You can define the Base language either when:

  • Creating a new Ask Now.

  • Editing an existing Ask Now — If there are existing translation for the previous chosen base language, some translations might be lost.

Base language selection (English (Canada)) when creating a new Ask Now.

Base language selection prevails when creating subsequent Ask Now. For example, if you choose French (Canada) as base language when creating your first Ask Now, the second one will have French (Canada) as base language selected by default, which you can modify to choose another language.

Languages

For multi-language Ask Now w questions, choose the languages to translate the questions text into. If Ask Now is single-language, click This Ad Hoc survey does not need translations to consider the Translations step completed and move forward.

'I don't need translations' checkbox is selected.

Tip: You can deselect this property at any time. In that case, you need to go over Testing and Review and deploy steps with the newly imported translations.

Add languages

To add languages, complete Questions, click Add languages, and choose all the languages the survey (and emails, if any) are translated into.

French (France) and French (Belgium) are selected.

After adding a language, its status needs to be Complete in Summary. To deploy Ask Now using the base language even if translations are not completed, select Use base language - <Base language name> I will translate later.

Language status

Languages can have any of these statuses:
  • Incomplete — This is the default status when adding a new a language for the first time. Text strings of either the questions are not translated. Languages with this status can't be use in Ask Now pages.
    Tip: To identify these strings, export all text strings filtering by this status, complete the missing translations, and import the file(s) again.

  • Complete — All strings (100%) from the questions are translated, with no translation issues. Languages with this status can be used as the value.

  • Enabled — Automatically set when language is completed with no translations issues. Enabled languages appear in the language dropdown in the survey.

  • Disabled — Language was manually disable and can't be used as an option in the survey language selector.

Language menu

Click Disable and hide for each added language to delete the language. This does not remove the translations, which should be available if the language is added back.

Lanfuage status and language menu

Download and upload translations

To bring the translated text into Ask Now, first download the text strings of the questions written in the base language, and then import the your translation into your Ask Now.

Download translations

To download the text strings, click Download and select:

  1. Languages — The language/s text strings are translated into. Click All to translate text strings into all the added languages.

  2. Translation status — Text strings status. See Translation status below for details. Click All to download strings with all statuses or choose the status of the text strings.

Click Include Shared survey text to also export content including the 'Required' tooltip, 'Choose language' string, button labels, and language dropdown names, as well as errors and timeout warning messages. For more information, see Survey settings.
Note: Shared survey text from these languages is already translated in Experience Cloud: English, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), French (France), French (Canada), German, Italian, and Portuguese (Brazil).

In this example, only text strings from French (Luxembourg) language with Missing translations status are downloaded.

Download selection in Translations.

Based on your previous selection, clicking Export downloads a ZIP file that may contain:

  • A spreadsheet file (XLSX format) with the question strings, in the same order they appear. Each of the columns that follow the Original text column (strings written in the Base language) correlate with each of the added languages where you need to add the translations. Each row in the spreadsheet represents an item to translate, with items grouped by their category. For example, Questions and Choice set strings are grouped together, in the same order they appear in the survey.

    Warning: Do not modify the first five columns of the spreadsheet for any reason. They are used to identify translation strings upon the importing of file. If you change these columns, the import fails.
Upload translation

To upload the files with the translated text strings, click Upload and choose the previously exported files with translations to import.

Restriction: Translations support importing XLSX flat file format, that is, only rows and columns with given final values on each cell (no formulas) for survey text and email plain text, and HTML for email rich text. File size can be up to 20 MB.
After Ask Now processes the file, a preview screen summarizes what items have been added, removed or changed. Click View changes to see these in detail before approving them. Click Import changes to import the affected strings.
Note: The languages used in individual columns for translations files are not validated, so ensure that language configuration, base question and answer set text, and translated question and answer set text are aligned as intended.

For example, uploading a translations file with a language other than the base language in the original language column may result in questions displayed in one language but its answers displayed in another.

Upload translations by clicking "View changes" and then "Import changes"

Note that you do not need to import a completed file. As long as the first six columns remain untouched for each row, you can leave empty cells in the spreadsheet.

Tip: For optimal performance, each file should contain up to 40,000 strings.

Translation status

For each language, translations can have any of these statuses:

  • Missing translations — Shows the number of text strings from surveys and emails in the base language that have not been provided a translation yet.

  • Translations with errors — Number of text strings that have errors in the translation.
    Tip: To identify the translations errors, export all text strings filtering by this status, fix the errors, and import the file(s) back again.

  • Translations out-of-sync — Displays the number of text strings that have changed in the base language survey or email(s) after translated strings were uploaded.

  • Completed translations — Number of text strings that were translated without errors.

For text strings with Missing translations, Translations with errors, and Translations out-of-sync statuses, export them in the corresponding language, add or modify the translations, and import the translated strings back into Ask Now.