Multilingual Surveys: Ask Consumers In Their Native Language

How to create multilingual surveys

Part of targeting the right survey audience is making your survey respondents as comfortable as possible with clear, concise surveys in their native language.

To help you create multilingual surveys, the Pollfish platform has native support for multiple survey languages, including: English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

When you select a language from the “Survey Language” menu, the prompts presented to respondents will change to that language.

NOTE: Changing the survey language will not translate the question and answer text, only instructional text such as “make a selection.”

At this time, there is no native support for automatic translation of questions or answer options. You will need to translate your questionnaire into the corresponding language prior to launch.

The questions and answers in your survey will be displayed exactly as you designed them, which you can confirm in your Survey Preview. We also recommend preparing for any translation needs once your survey is complete, as answers will be displayed in the language in which the respondent replies.

Unfortunately Pollfish does not offer translation services at this time, however a quick Google search can help you find a translation vendor, or you can use an online tool such as Google Translate. You will need to verify that your keyboard provides support for any special characters required and must be certain that the translations are not offensive or can be misinterpreted by the participant, as such tools do not account for all the nuances in multiple language translation. Many of our clients choose to work with outside translation services for questionnaire development and interpreting results.