Translating comments

Reporting > Text Processing > Comment Translations

Machine translation (also known as automatic translation) is the use of software to translate text. For comments you receive in surveys, including those from Text Analytics, Medallia Experience Cloud allows you to use machine translation, manual translation, or a combination of both methods. For any comment, a manual translation overrides a machine translation.

Experience Cloud provides the following machine translation engines:

  • Amazon Translate
  • Google Translate
  • SYSTRAN
Restriction: Amazon Translate is only available for Medallia GovCloud and it is the only machine translation engine supported. Contact your Medallia representative to request it.

Source language and language detection

In translation, the source language is the original language of the text, and the target language is the language to which the text is translated. Experience Cloud supports the translation of comments from multiple source languages into one target language.

When comments are translated, Experience Cloud performs analysis and produces reports using the translated version of the comments. Medallia Text Analytics topic names and rules are also in the target language. For example, if you selected Japanese as the source language and English as the target language, you would build topics in English, and Japanese comments in Experience Cloud would be translated into English.

As of the 2026 H2 2 release, language detection is enabled for all customers as a fallback mechanism.

If a_survey_language specifies a language, that language is used for processing all comments on the record. If no language is specified in a_survey_language, the language specified in a_detected_language is used instead. If neither a_survey_language nor a_detected_language is defined, record processing fails with the TAGGING_FAILED status, and no tags are generated.

Important: Relying solely on language detection for identifying comments to be translated is not recommended. Language detection features should be treated strictly as a fallback heuristic. To guarantee the most stable, performant, and predictable Text Analytics processing, all incoming records must explicitly provide their language at the time of ingestion.

For comments in multiple languages, and for comments in a language other than that specified in a_survey_language, Experience Cloud processes the record using the language defined in a_survey_language. This may lead to erroneous tagging.

Language detection exhibits reduced performance for some languages (for example, Nepali). Language detection also has poor precision when processing short text verbatims of only 5-10 characters. Medallia recommends reviewing which language is used by respondents most often and setting the a_survey_language field accordingly.

When running a backfill or reprocessing records, historical records processed prior to the language detection behavior described in this section that have no language defined in a_survey_language are not automatically backfilled or reprocessed. To force re-execution of language detection, use the RETRANSLATE_ALL_COMMENTS or PROCESS_UPDATED_TRANSLATION_FIELDS_AND_LANGUAGES custom processing options. For more information, see Custom processing options.

Translation and language detection

Experience Cloud uses the comment's source language when deciding whether to ask for a translation. Experience Cloud determines the source language and populates that language in the a_detected_language field.

Comments whose source language is configured for translation by SYSTRAN must have a language specified in a_survey_language because SYSTRAN does not auto-detect languages.

Amazon and Google Translate do auto-detect languages. If a comment is marked as Spanish but is actually French, Amazon and Google auto-detect French and translate accordingly. For translation requests sent to Amazon and Google, Experience Cloud sends only the comment text and target language, and does not include the value of a_detected_language.

Note: If a_surveylanguage matches the target language set on the Comment Translations screen, then the comment is never translated, as comments that are assumed to be in the target language are not examined for translation. For example, if the target language is English and a comment has text in Spanish but has a_surveylanguage=English, then Amazon and Google do not translate it.

If you have been translating comments manually, and then activate machine translation, your manual translations are retained.

Speed of translations

It takes time for translated comments to appear in reports. For a single invited survey coming into Experience Cloud, expect a 15 minute delay. However, it could take longer if, for example, an import is in process or there is a long queue of incoming surveys to process. For a batch process of 1 million surveys, 2 weeks is a conservative baseline, though with this many surveys an accurate estimate is elusive. A few relevant considerations include:

  • Survey complexity.
  • The length of the text to translate.
  • The number of comment fields being translated in each survey.
  • The translation service being used. Amazon and Google have more capacity than SYSTRAN, but also include a daily limit.
  • If Text Analytics is enabled, tagging takes additional time to process.
Note: Auto-excluded survey records (those with an e_status field value of AUTO_EXCLUDED) are not translated. For more information about survey status, see Survey status (e_status). For more information about configuring Auto Exclude rules, see Auto Exclude rules.

Data security with translations

Translations with SYSTRAN occur on-site in the Medallia data center, using SYSTRAN libraries. Translations with Amazon Translate and Google Translate are made with secure APIs.

Enabling machine translation of comments

Enabling machine translation of comments affects every program on the Experience Cloud instance.

Comments translated using machine translations are stored as Alternative sets whose ContentKind must be Translated Comment or Translatable Text. These are translated to A-fields, which contain the machine translation, and can then be exported as A-fields.

Note: Medallia Mobile supports machine-translated text, displaying the translated comment as a default. However, you can toggle between the original language and the translation once you click on the Responses Form report.
  1. Open the Reporting > Report Helpers > Fields > Q-Fields screen.

  2. For the fields you want to translate, change the AlternativeSet property from Comment to Translated Comment, and then click Save.

  3. Open the Reporting > Text Processing > Comment Translations screen.
  4. In the Target Language property, select the language to which comments will be translated.
  5. In the Translation Scheme property, select the service you want to use for machine translation:
    • NO_TRANSLATION — You must translate comments manually.
    • MACHINE_AMAZON — Experience Cloud uses Amazon Translate for comments.
    • MACHINE_GOOGLE — Experience Cloud uses Google Translate for comments.
    • MACHINE_SYSTRAN — Experience Cloud uses SYSTRAN for comments.
  6. Click Save.
  7. In the Source Languages property, select the languages you want translated.
  8. In the MemberSurveyFields property, select the comment fields you want translated.
    Important: K-fields are not translated.
  9. Open the Reporting Text Processing > Global Text Analytics Settings > Settings screen.

  10. Change the Language Processing value to Translation for each language you want translated, and then click Save.

  11. Open the Reporting > Text Processing > Global Text Analytics Settings > Processings screen.
  12. In the Processing option property, select Process updated translation fields and languages, and then click Save.
  13. Turn on Confirm, and then click Process updated translation fields and languages.

    This enables translation processing for the languages and comment fields you selected in previous steps.

  14. Complete the following sub-steps only if you want to export the translated text:
    1. Open the Integrations > Data Exports > Company A-Fields screen.
    2. In the TranslationFields property, select one or more comment fields by moving them to the right-side box.

      Experience Cloud creates A-fields for each selected field. For more information, see Company A-fields.

  15. On the Reporting > Text Processing > Global Text Analytics Settings > Settings screen, turn on the Marking Surveys Enabled property, and then click Save.

Restriction: For cost reasons, Machine translations cannot be enabled for sandboxes.

Enabling manual translation of comments

If you enable manual translation of comments, users with the right permission can override translations done by machine or even enter their own translations for previously-untranslated comments. These users see an Edit button next to translatable comments on the Responses Form report. After saving an edit, the user can refresh the report to see the translation. If Enhanced Responses are enabled, all manual changes appear in the Activity log. For more information, see  Enhanced responses.

If you are using Text Analytics, saving a manual translation initiates new tagging and parsing processes. For more information, see Text Analytics processing and initialization.

  1. Open the Reporting > Text Processing > Comment Translations screen.
  2. Turn on the Enable manual translations property, and then click Save.
  3. For any role that should be able to translate comments manually, in Admin Suite assign one of the following permissions:
    • Edit Manual Translation — Allows uses in this role to manually translate any comment, including those already translated by machine.
    • Edit Machine Translation — Allows users in this role to override machine translation with manual translation.

    For more information, see Roles.