With a List survey, you can program, launch, and analyze your survey in multiple languages. Respondents choose their preferred language when they start, and all responses come together in a single report.

In This Article

• Before You Begin
• Setting Languages on a Multilingual List Survey
• Programming a Translation
• Adding Images to the Translation Table
• Quick Preview
• Respondent Experience
• Results Page
• Translation Table Actions

Before You Begin

• Plan availability: Multilingual surveys are included in all plans except Lite and Enterprise Trial. Without the multilingual feature, you can select only one survey language, and the translation tools are unavailable. To add it, contact your account manager.
• Available languages: List surveys use a fixed list of 29 languages, with one entry per language (e.g., French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese). Regional variants such as Canadian French or Brazilian Portuguese aren't available. If you don't see the language you need, reach out to our Customer Engagement team to discuss options.
• No language limit: You can select as many languages as you need. The Translation Table displays three language columns comfortably; with more, columns switch to a fixed width and you can scroll or hide columns.

Setting Languages on a Multilingual List Survey

1. On the Target Market page, click the Survey language dropdown and check the boxes next to all the languages you'd like to include. Use Select all to add every language at once.
2. Confirm your privacy jurisdiction, sample size, and other options on the Target Market page.
3. Click EDIT SURVEY (or WRITE SURVEY on a brand-new survey) to open the Survey Editor.

Programming a Translation

Program your survey in the researcher language first, then add your other languages. On a new survey, the researcher language is the first selected language in aytm's language order—not the order you clicked. English always comes first, so any survey that includes English uses English as the researcher language. For example, a survey with Spanish and French uses Spanish. To change it, see Setting English as Research Language.

Opening the Translation Table

Click the Languages icon in the Survey Editor toolbar, or click the Languages link above any question. From the Translation Table, you can type translations directly, upload a translated CSV, or have Skipper translate for you (see Skipper Translate Overview).

Translating with a CSV

1. Click Download CSV to download the current state of your translations. The file contains:
   • A Reference column with one row per text field (e.g., Q1, Q1A2), plus WELCOMETEXT and THANKYOUTEXT rows. Image alt text appears as extra rows ending in altText, where alt text exists.
   • A Logic column with each field's logic in plain text.
   • A pre-filled column for the researcher language, labeled with its code and name (e.g., EN English).
   • One column for each additional language (e.g., ES Spanish). Any translations you've already added are included.
2. Make your edits or send the file to your translator. Ask them to fill in every cell and leave the Reference and Logic columns unchanged.
3. Save the file as CSV UTF-8. Excel's standard CSV format will garble non-English characters.
4. Click Upload CSV on the Translation Table and select your file.
5. Make any further changes directly in the language columns of the Translation Table.

⚠️ Note: Upload the full file you downloaded. Every language column in the file overwrites the table, and an empty cell erases that text—including in the researcher language column. Editing the Logic column changes your survey's logic, so leave it as-is. Images aren't included in the CSV; add them in the table instead.

Editing the Researcher Language

Researcher language cells are read-only in the Translation Table. To edit them, click the X in the top-right corner to return to the Survey Editor. Any unsaved changes sync before you leave.

Adding Images to the Translation Table

Images programmed in the Survey Editor are automatically piped into each translation, and so are videos and files. If a field has no image, an image icon appears in its place.

To replace a piped image with a localized one, use any of these options in the translation's column:

• Click the image and select a file from your computer.
• Drag a file from your computer onto the cell.
• Drag an image from another language's column onto the cell to copy it.

To remove a localized image, hover over it and click DELETE. The piped image from the researcher language returns. To remove an image from the survey entirely, delete it in the Survey Editor.

You can tell the two image types apart by shape and label:

• Localized images have rounded corners. On hover, they're labeled Attention: localized image.
• Piped images are rectangular, with a small pointer on the left. On hover, they name their source column, e.g., Piped from EN English column.

Quick Preview

Preview the entire survey before launching. Previews open in one of three modes: Respondent mode, Researcher mode, and Ghost mode. In Researcher mode and Ghost mode, you can pick the preview language from the preview toolbar. In Respondent mode, you choose it by answering the language preference question, as a respondent would.

There are three ways to preview your survey:

1. Click Quick preview in the Survey Editor.
2. On the Translation Table, open any language column's dropdown and select Quick preview. The preview opens in Ghost mode at Q1, in that column's language. You can switch modes from the preview toolbar.
3. In the Survey Editor, use the language dropdown (tooltip: Switch language) to view the survey in another language. Then click Quick preview in the Survey translation sidebar to preview in that language.

Quotas on respondents' preferred language can't be set on the List Target Market page. To enforce them, reach out to your account manager or our Customer Engagement team.

Respondent Experience

When your survey includes two or more languages, respondents see a language preference question at the start, which directs them to the matching translation. It's a single-choice question with a welcome image and no question text. Each answer is written in its own language, for example:

• I prefer to complete this survey in English.
• Prefiero completar esta encuesta en español.

With only one language selected, this question is skipped.

Results Page

On the Results page, all responses come together in a single report, with question text shown in the researcher language. You can:

• Preview the survey in any of its languages: click Survey preview in the Target panel, then pick the language in Researcher mode or Ghost mode. 

• Filter responses by preferred language using the Locale variable in the Filters panel. 

• Generate Virtual Questions.

• Translate open-ended responses with Skipper Verbatim Translation, an add-on you can enable at checkout.

Translation Table Actions

Once your survey is programmed, open the Translation Table from the Languages icon in the Survey Editor toolbar or the Languages link above any question.

Table Header Controls

1. Undo/Redo—click the arrow icons to revert or reapply recent changes. Keyboard shortcuts: ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z on Mac, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y on Windows.
2. Target Market—jump back to the Target Market page.
3. Columns—show or hide language columns. The researcher language column can't be hidden.
4. Survey logic—click the column header, or the aytm Logic icon in any row, to show the logic. The expanded header reads "Survey logic is applied to all languages". Click collapse to hide it.

💡 Tip: Paste multiple lines into an empty translation column to fill it one row at a time, going down. Pasting starts at the current cell (or the next row, if the current cell has text) and stops at the first row that already has text—any leftover lines are dropped, and blank lines are ignored.

       5. Language Column Dropdown

Click a language column's header to open its dropdown. The available options depend on the column:

Resolving Character Limits

If a translation exceeds the platform's character limits, the cell's character counter turns red. Hover over the cell to see the message "This field exceeds the character limits. Please shorten it or use the Skipper link below to auto-adjust the question". Click Resolve to fit to have Skipper condense the whole question in all translation languages, not only the cell you're in.

Resolve to fit isn't available inside Smart Loops or when Skipper question editing is turned off for your account. In those cases, shorten the text manually.

Related Articles

• How to Set English as the Research Language
• Verbatim Skipper Translation
• How to Build a Multilingual Panel Survey
• Virtual Questions Overview