Translations

Translate emails, surveys, reports, etc. from English into as many languages as your company needs

Medallia Experience Cloud supports using multiple languages for emails, surveys, reports, and survey takers' responses. On-screen text is in English by default, but you can translate the text into as many languages as your company needs.

Before you begin

Before starting working on Translations, consider the following:
  • You are working on a sandbox instance. Translations do not support versions, and any changes done on a translation in a production instance impacts automatically on live assets (surveys, emails, reports). Once you have tested and approved the translations, you can promote them to a production instance using Change sets.
    Tip: When creating the outbound change set, select the languages of the translated entity (surveys, emails, reports,etc.) on the Advanced tab.

  • You need at least one survey and one version to see text strings, even when using other applications. For example, if you have Digital apps package installed and only use Experience Cloud for reports, you still need to create a survey as placeholder for Translations to display the text strings.

  • Languages are shared across the Experience Cloud entire instance. Any changes to a language impacts all the assets and entities using it, including surveys, emails, reports, etc.

Access Translations

To use Translations, roles need one or more of Translations permissions listed in Administrative permissions. For more information, see:

To launch Translations, select the Translations tile under the Signal capture section.

Translations tile in Admin Suite.

Translations screen

The Translations screen shows all of the text strings you can translate from assets such as questions and choice sets from surveys, emails, reports, and so on.

When you access the Translations screen, use the search tool and the available filters to find translations strings.

Screen capture showing the Translations screen

Search the desired assets, select the language and check the status of each component of your assets.

Once you find the relevant assets, the screen is divided into two areas:

  • Original text area — Left area of the screen. It shows the text strings in the source language, which in Experience Cloud is English by default. Additionally, it displays:

    • Filters — Filter original text strings by Asset type and Category. For more information, see Filters.

    • Search by — Search using either text, Field ID, or Field key. For more information, see Search.

    • Context — Each element in the list can be expanded to reveal multiple related strings and the context where they appear. For example, strings that have In mobile survey mean that you can add a shortened text for smaller screens.

  • Translated text area — Right area of the screen. It shows the text strings translated into the target language, or the source language if no translations has been provided. Additionally, it displays:

    • Languages — Available languages in Experience Cloud instance you can translate strings into. For more information, see Languages.

    • Translation statuses — Different statuses a translation can have. For more information, see Translate strings manually.

Layer 1 1 2 3 3 4 5 6 7

  1. Original text area
  2. Translated text area
  3. Filters: Asset types and Category
  4. Search by
  5. Context
  6. Languages
  7. Translation status

Filters

Filters narrow down the number of strings on the Translations screen in the Original text area. You can combine the Asset types and Category filters to obtain more granular results.

Asset types filter

This filter lists Admin Suite assets such as:

  • All types — Lists text strings from all assets: surveys, reports, emails (Survey email, Feedback response emails, and application emails) and organizational hierarchy elements (Units, Unit groups).

  • Surveys — Lists all available text strings from surveys. Choose a survey to only shows its translatable text strings.
    Important: For a survey string to appear on the Translations screen, the survey must have at least one version different from the Draft version.

  • Reports — Lists all available text strings from reports.

  • Survey emails — Lists all available text strings from survey emails. Choose an email to only shows its translatable text strings.

  • Feedback response emails — Lists all available text strings from feedback response emails. Choose an email to only shows its translatable text strings.

  • Application emails — Lists all available text strings from application emails. Choose an email to only shows its translatable text strings.

  • Hierarchy — Lists all available text strings from the organizational hierarchy (Units and Unit groups).

Asset type filter includes several assets, such as Surveys, Reports, Survey emails, Feedback response emails, Application emails, and Hierarchy.

Category filter

This filter groups translatable strings specific to the asset type. If Asset types is All types, it includes strings common to all asset types, such as:
  • Choice sets (which must be tied to a Feedback field to appear).
  • Event and Contact fields
  • Formula fields
  • Feedback fields.
Category includes:
  • Surveys — Groups text strings from:

    • Survey text — Text strings from Content elements.

    • Shared survey text — Miscellaneous Survey settings text strings as well as: buttons (Back, Next, etc.), Comment boost prompts, Tooltip (Text type) 'Required' tooltip, 'Choose language' and the language dropdown names, errors and timeout warning messages.
      Important: Shared survey text translation impacts all surveys where the shared survey text appears.
  • Reports — Groups text strings shown in:

    • Reporting navigation.

    • Reporting text — Strings displayed on homepages, report views, Feedback fields and choice set groups, Standard report instances.

    • Shared reporting text — Text strings shown in reports that is not configured by an administrator, such as Dashboards and Filters and control panels content.
      Important: Shared reporting text translation impacts all reports where the shared survey text appears.

    • Aggregate fields — Strings from Calculated Reporting Fields (R-fields) used to calculate aggregate scores across feedback records.

    • Calculations.

    • Timeperiods.

    Tip: X-frame modules uses FormatJS message syntax for piping in variables. It formats strings enclosed in curly braces {}, transforms them using replacements (arguments), and refers to a value in the input data.

    Usually, variables refer to numbers or any data that should not be translated, but that there some cases that variables refer to other translatable strings (for example, {Main dataset}, {Compare}, and {Comparison data set}). For those cases, to translate the string in the variable, search for the text of the string (such as Main dataset) in the Translations screen instead of their IDs (such as NGR.TAComparison.MainDataset).

  • Alerts.

  • Hierarchy — Groups text strings from the organizational hierarchy:

    • Hierarchy — Text displayed on Unit field names and in surveys' custom footers.

    • Hierarchy fields — Strings from Unit and Unit groups data fields.

  • Shared application text — Strings shown in authentication, login and miscellaneous errors; Intercept surveys; Countries and states; Feeds; Format.

  • Text Analytics — Groups text strings from Text Analytics:

    • Shared Text Analytics text — Content displayed on certain Text Analytics reports.

    • Text Analytics topics — Text shown in Topics.

  • Object schemas — Strings from customer attributes of Customer Profiles

Category filters includes: Choice sets, Event and Contact fields, Formula fields, Feedback fields, Survey text, Shared survey text, Reporting navigation, Reporting text, etc.

Search

Use the search bar to look for for specific content. To trigger the search, enter a value in the Search field and select an option in the Search by field. Search by:

  • Text — Using the string content, such as Are you under 18?. Note that Text search is inexact and often returns far more matches than desired.

  • Field ID — ID of a specific field. For example, q_company_question1.

  • Field key — Unique key that matches a single translation string, such as :question:176919a1-05c9-4f34-a056-05eb99c7e157:. Note that full key needs to be included and that partial matches are not supported. Additionally, make sure the Asset Type, Search by, and Category are set correctly.

Search by using a Field key and a Feedback field key entered in the search bar.

To obtain the Field key or Field ID, search by Text and mouse over the question mark icon and copy either of them.

Field key and Field ID appear when hovering over the information icon.

Languages

Each Experience Cloud instance include the languages you can translate the text strings into. To know all the languages available in your instance, click the Language dropdown. For a full list of the supported languages in Medallia Experience Cloud, see Supported languages for translations.

Language menu listing all available languages in the instance.

Note: For cases where languages are unavailable (grayed out), either because they are inactive or set as usedForReporting, enable them in your instance by navigating to Locales and either unlock an existing locale or create a new one. Ensure that unlocking/activating an existing locale does not impact any survey.

Add languages

  1. From Translations, click Manage languages.

  2. Choose Add language.

  3. Select a language from the list of all supported languages.

  4. Optionally, click Show advanced section to configure:

    • Survey translations — Select Enable this language on surveys to make this language available to translate survey text strings.

      • Rule — A language is available in the survey language dropdown selector when the Rule condition evaluates to true. For example, you might want the language to be available only on certain surveys, or to survey takers with a specific value on a field that relates to their nationality. If the Rule condition is false, the language is not be available in the survey language selector. If there is only one language, the language selector does not appear.

    • Reporting translations — Select Enable this language in reporting to to make this language available in reports.

Manage languages

To show strings in a particular language, select the language from the Languages menu on the Translated text area. To edit an existing language, choose the language to edit and modify the advanced settings as best fits your needs.

Important: Languages are shared across the Experience Cloud entire instance. Any changes to a language impacts all the assets and entities using it, including surveys, emails, reports, etc.

If languages in your instance are organized hierarchically, you can set a string to inherit from its parent language. In this way, if French (France) is a child of French and you want the same text in both languages, you do not need to provide two individual translations.

The text displayed in the source language is exactly what was written when creating the strings, which can be in any language. To make changes through translation, you must add a separate translation for each language, including one for the language in which the original text was written. For example, if a survey was originally written in Spanish, you must still add a translation for Spanish to make changes (in this case, you can simply copy the values from the source text into the new translation).

You can translate to any language, regardless of its hierarchy or the other languages already translated. For example, you could first translate to Spanish (Colombia) and then to the parent Spanish language at a later date.

Note: If you leave any strings without any translated text, verify that Experience Cloud resolves those strings as expected after the translation is done. Experience Cloud fills in missing strings from the closest parent language in the hierarchical structure. Remember that in Medallia Experience Cloud the parent of all languages is English, so even if the original text is in a different language, translations for blank strings ultimately translate to English.

Translate strings manually

Complete these steps to translate individual strings directly on the Translations screen in Admin Suite:

  1. From the Translations screen, choose the Asset type and Category to filter the translation strings. For more information, see Filters.

  2. Choose a target Language.

    All strings in that language are displayed on the Translated text area (right side), and the strings in the in the source language on the Original text area (left side).

  3. On the Original text area, click a row to reveal all of its related strings and the context where they appear.

    Click a row to reveal their related strings and their context.

  4. On the Translated text area, hover over a string to see Edit Edit.

  5. Click Edit Edit to translate the string. When selecting a string from an email, the string becomes a link that redirects to the Email translation editor. For more information, see Accessing the Email translation editor.

Tip: Since all the translatable strings might total a significant number, combine Filters to search for a specific string and narrow down the results. Alternatively, follow the steps on Translate strings in bulk to search directly in the downloaded file.
Warning: Do not use the <html> tag when using the <script> tag.

Original text area menu

For each string, click More vertical icon the Original text area menu to:
Do not translate
Marks a string to avoid translating it, and displays it in the default language (English) everywhere. Strings that are marked as non-translatable are not included when downloading a translation file, and they are not processed if they are in an imported translation file.

Select Translate if you want to translate a non-translatable string. Note that the Do not translate option is not longer available.

Click the original text menu to set a string as non-translatable

Translated text area menu

For each string, click More vertical icon the Translated text area menu to:

Use parent
Sets a string to inherit from its parent language if languages in the instance are organized hierarchically. See Supported languages for translations for a complete list of hierarchical relationships between languages.

Click the translated text action menu to Use parent translation.

Translation status

For each language, translated strings can have any of these statuses:

  • All translations — Shows all existing text strings.

  • Missing translations — Text strings in the source language that have not been provided into the target language.

  • Translation errors — Text strings that have errors in the translation.

  • Translations out of sync — Text strings that have changed in the original text (that is, in the source language) after translating the strings.

  • Do not translate — Strings that were marked as not translatable, and it is always shown in the source language.

  • Using parent translation — Strings that use translations inherited from the parent language.

  • OK — Text strings that have been translated without errors.

Translation status menu

Restriction: Certain parts of Experience Cloud, such as Alerts, cannot be directly translated from Admin Suite Translations. For more information, see Localization.

Translate strings in bulk

To add or update translations in bulk, start by exporting a file with the translatable content. Work with your translation team or vendor to translate strings in the exported file, and then and upload it back to Experience Cloud after the translations are done. Note that strings are exported as an Excel file (XLSX).

Screen capture showing export options

  1. Click Download and select:

    • Surveys — Choose the surveys to download strings from. Click Select all to download strings from all surveys. Click Include Shared survey text to also export miscellaneous Survey settings content including the 'Required' tooltip, 'Choose language' string, button labels, and language dropdown names, as well as errors and timeout warning messages.

    • Emails — Choose the emails to download strings from. Click Select all to download strings from all emails.

      Warning: Due to an Excel limitation, each file cell allows up to 32,767 characters. Cells exceeding this limit display the message NOT-DISPLAYED-SINCE-OVER-32K-CHAR-LIMIT. Emails that have cells exceeding this limit are downloaded as a ZIP file with an Excel file, which may include a plain text file (TXT) with the HTML content.

    • Reports — Click Select all to download strings from all reports.

    • Organizational hierarchy — Click Select all to download strings from all the organization hierarchy.

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

    • Translation status — Text strings status. Click Select all to download strings with all statuses. For more information, see Translation status.

  2. Click Download.

    When a download is triggered, a new tracking window displays the progress in real-time, allowing navigation away from the page without interrupting the process.

    Image showing "Export in progress" message

    You can track the download process in the Translations Exports Queue.

    Translations Exports queue showing an export file being downloaded

    Once the download process is complete, the files are securely stored and accessible at any time within the Translation Exports section.

    Translations Exports Queue showing a file ready for download

  3. On the Translations Exports Queue, select the file and click Download.

  4. Open the downloaded file in a spreadsheet editor.

    Spreadsheet with downloaded data.

    Each row in the spreadsheet represents an item to translate, with items grouped by their section. For example, Survey and Feedback fields strings are grouped together. Each translatable item is likely to have multiple strings for translation, and therefore multiple rows in the spreadsheet. Each of the columns that follow the original text is a target language for translation. Choice sets appear a single time in the spreadsheet, regardless of how many questions use them.

    Warning: Do not modify the first five columns of the spreadsheet as they are used to identify translation strings upon re-import of the file. Changing these columns results in the import failing.
    You do not need to upload a completed file. As long as the first five columns remain untouched for each row, you can remove language columns or leave empty cells in the spreadsheet. Experience Cloud processes the remaining translated content. Empty cells do not overwrite previously-translated strings.
    To overwrite content with an empty value, enter <<DELETE-TRANSLATION>> in the cell for that string.
    Warning: If a item is uploaded with an unrecognized key, it skips processing. If an uploaded file has 100% of the keys are not recognized, the processor shows the message: Your file has no changes.

  5. Save your work locally, then click Upload and select the spreadsheet file.

    Important: Translations supports importing XLSX flat file format, that is, only rows and columns with given final values on each cell (no formulas). File size can be up to 5 MB.

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

    When uploading a file, the cells cannot remain empty: if a cell should be empty, write <<DELETE-TRANSLATION>> in the cell for the string.

    Restriction: Due to an Excel limitation, each file cell allows up to 32,767 characters. Cells exceeding this limit are not uploaded.
  6. After Experience Cloud 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.

    Dialog for viewing translation changes.

  7. Click Save changes to change the affected strings.

  8. For surveys, you must push the changes to the Survey engine. For more information, see Synchronize versions.

  9. Validate your translations. For example, for surveys, generate a preview survey link.