When conducting a survey in a country with multiple languages available, you can seamlessly program, launch, and analyze a single survey in those languages. For instance, if you're launching a survey in the United States, you can provide respondents with the option to complete it in either English or Spanish.

Setting Languages on a Multilingual Panel Survey

Field a multilingual Panel survey within a country that has multiple languages available on the Target Market page.

1. Click the Country/Language dropdown to select the fielding country.
2. Click the Language dropdown and check the boxes next to all languages you'd like to include.
3. Click Write Survey to proceed to the Survey Editor (after setting your audience preferences and sample size on the Target Market page).

⚠️ Note: Language availability is limited by the fielding country. If you need a language that's unavailable, reach out to our Customer Engagement team. If fielding in multiple countries, you must create and launch a separate survey per country.

Programming a Translation

Once the survey has been programmed in the Researcher Language (by default English, or the first language on the Target Market page), you can begin programming your other language(s).

⚠️ Note: Not all question types are compatible with the Languages table. For the following question types, reach out to your account manager or support@aytm.com for assistance: Cascade, Combo box, Heatmap (only if images contain text requiring translation), and Shelf Test.

1. Click the Languages button in the upper right corner of the Survey Editor, or above any question, to open the Translation Table. From here you can manually type the translation or streamline the process by uploading a translated CSV.
2. Click Download CSV to download a CSV of the current state. This CSV contains:
   • A column for the survey schema.
   • A column for any logic used throughout the survey. If logic has been entered, a [+] icon appears — click it to view, or click Collapse to hide.
   • A column for the researcher language (pre-filled).
   • An empty column for your alternate language.
3. Make edits to the Language Translation column, or send the file to your translator with clear instructions to leave both the logic and Researcher language columns intact.
4. Click Upload CSV on the Translation Table to upload the updated version (with both languages) into the platform.
5. Make any additional changes to translations directly in the appropriate column of the translation table.

⚠️ Note: aytm recommends saving the updated CSV file as CSV UTF-8. Any edits made to the English/Researcher language column will replace the existing text. To edit the Researcher Language, click the X to return to the Survey Editor.

Uploading Images to the Translation Table

Any images programmed in the Survey Editor will automatically be piped into each translation. If an image was not included, a camera icon appears in its place.

1. Click the existing image in the appropriate translation's column and select a file from your hard drive to replace the piped image with a localized image.
2. Hover over the image in the language column and click Delete to remove a translation-specific image.

⚠️ Note: To fully remove an image from the survey, delete it from the Survey Editor page. Images uploaded directly into a translation are labeled Attention: Localized Image, while images piped from the master survey are labeled Piped from Researcher language.

Quick Preview

Before launching, preview the entire study. In Researcher mode and Ghost mode, you can select the preview language directly; in Respondent mode, you must select the preview language by answering the language preference question.

There are three ways to preview your survey:

1. Click the Quick Preview button on the Survey Editor page.
2. On the Translation Table, click the English (or Researcher language) dropdown and select Quick Preview to view in Respondent, Researcher, or Ghost mode.
3. Click the Translation language dropdown to:
   • Open a Quick Preview of the survey in that language.
   • View the survey schema from the Survey Editor page in the translated language.

⚠️ Note: To enforce quotas on respondents' preferred language, reach out to your account manager or our Customer Engagement team.

Respondent Experience

When respondents begin the survey, they'll be prompted to choose their preferred language, which directs them to the appropriate survey translation.

Results Page

On the Results page, all survey data aggregates in a single report in the default language. You can:

• Preview the survey in either language from the Survey Specification menu.
• Filter responses by preferred language using the Locale dropdown.
• Generate Virtual Questions.
• Translate open-ended responses into your designated Research Language with Verbatim Skipper Translation.

⚠️ Note: To simplify analysis of multilingual open-ended responses, enable Verbatim Skipper Translation. This translates verbatims into your Research Language, making it easier to review and compare responses across all programmed survey languages.

Other Actions

With your survey programmed, click the Languages button in the upper right corner (or above any question) to open the Translation Table.

💡 Tip: Use copy/paste commands to populate answer options into an empty translation table column. Pasted content will only be inserted if the destination cells are empty — existing text will not be overwritten.

1. Click the Undo/Redo buttons across the top of the Translation Table to revert recent changes.
2. Select Target Market to jump back to the Target Market page.
3. Click the Columns dropdown to show or hide languages.
4. Click [+] in the Survey Logic column to show logic; select Collapse to hide it.
5. Click the Translation language dropdown to:
   • Open a Quick Preview of the survey.
   • Click View Survey in__ to view the schema in the translated language.
   • Select Set as researcher language to make a language the researcher language (this also affects the Results page).
   • Select Translate from (researcher language) to (translation language) to localize an existing translation (e.g. French to Canadian French).
   • Select Translate this column to __ if the text in a column differs from the header language — this automatically converts the content to match.
   • Select Translate and Copy from this column to (researcher language) to translate and copy an existing column (e.g. Italian to English).
   • Click Delete translation to completely reset a translation. A previous version (including the deleted translation) will appear in your Survey History.

⚠️ Note: After translating, if the Researcher Language text fits within the platform's character limits but the translation does not, the text will turn red in the Translation Table. Hover over the text and select Resolve to fit to let Skipper condense the translation.

Learn more about Multilingual Surveys in the Lighthouse Academy!