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Translating Messages (EX & 360)

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Qtip: This page describes functionality available to Engagement, Ad Hoc Employee Research, and 360 projects. For more details on each, see Types of Employee Experience Projects.

About Translating Messages

You can save translations of your email messages (EX|360). These translations are automatically associated with the original message, so that you can send the same message in many languages without having to schedule separate emails to separate groups.

Specifying a Participant’s Language

Before you send out your translated messages, you will need to specify a language for each of your participants. That way, Qualtrics knows which messages to send to which participants.

You will want to include a column called Language when you upload your participants (EX|360). In this column, you’ll assign every participant a language code rather than writing out the name of the language. See our list of available language codes.

If you’ve already uploaded a participant, you can also edit their language by searching for them in the Participants tab and clicking their name (EX|360). Then add a field named Language and set it equal to the desired language code.

Qtip: The language code you include as metadata in the participant list determines the language email the participant receives, provided you have translated your email messages. It does not affect the language of the survey.
Attention: Qualtrics does not dynamically change an email based on browser language setting. A language must be assigned to a participant before the email messages are sent out in order to have the correct message translation appears. Be sure you don’t skip this step!

When languages aren’t specified

It’s important to make sure participant, survey, and message languages are aligned. For example, if a participant doesn’t have a language assigned to them in their metadata with a corresponding message translation, the participant will instead get a message in the base language of the survey.

However, if the base language of a survey doesn’t have a matching message translation, the participant will receive a message in the language of the distribution’s sender. The sender’s language is the language their account was set to when they sent the message.

Example: Barnaby has a survey in French (FR), English (EN), and Spanish (ES).

  • The survey’s base language is set to French (FR).
  • Barnaby’s account language is set to English (EN).
  • The participant Matilda is set to Latin American Spanish (ES).

When Barnaby translates the message from English (EN), he accidentally uses European Spanish (ES-ES) and Canadian French (FR-CA).

Because of how Barnaby translated the message, there’s no Latin American Spanish message (ES), and the survey’s base language (FR) doesn’t have a matching message either (FR-CA). So Matilda is given the English (EN) message.

 

Translating Employee Experience (EX) Messages

In the following steps, we’ll show how to translate emails for Engagement, Lifecycle, Ad Hoc Employee Research, and Employee Journey Analytics. For more on different types of Employee Experience projects, see the linked page.

Qtip: If you’re using an existing library message, you can also translate the message right in the library instead. See also Employee Experience message types.
Qtip: Automatic machine translation is not available in Employee Experience messages, only in library messages.
  1. Create a new email message in your project.
    in the editor for EX messages is 3 dots in the upper corner, which shows a menu where you can add languages
  2. Click the 3 dots.
  3. Click Add languages.
  4. Select the languages you want to add.
    new window opens over the page with a list of selectable languages
  5. Click Add languages.
  6. Translate the subject and message. Make sure to keep piped text the same.
    original email and translation appear side by side in editor

    Qtip: See more on customizing EX emails.
  7. Use the menu to switch between the languages you added and set up their translation.
  8. More options are available if you click the 3 dots:
    • Delete translation: Delete the translation. This is a good option not just to remove a translation altogether, but to start over and redo a language.
    • Add languages: Add more languages to translate the message into.
  9. If desired, you can save the messages you created and translated for later reuse.
  10. Complete your email setup.

 

Translating 360 Email Messages

Follow the instructions in this section to translate email messages for 360 projects.

  1. Navigate to the Email Messages section in the Messages tab.
    clicking the gear icon next to the message and selecting show translation
  2. Select your message type.
  3. Click the message editor options icon on the far-right.
  4. Select Show Translation.
  5. Select the languages you wish to translate your messages to.
    choosing the languages to add translations for
  6. Click Close.
  7. Select the language you wish to edit the message for. You can return to this menu later to edit the other messages or to add more languages.
    Language selection dropdown next to the Schedule Email button. Rich content editor of the email to the right where you type translated material
  8. In the editing pane that opens to the right, type out or paste in your translation.
Qtip: When you save Employee Experience messages to your library that have been translated in your Email Messages section, the translations are also saved. However, you can still create translations right inside the Library. Visit the linked support page for more details on how.

 

Additional Options

When you’re finished writing your translations and want to close the editing pane, you can click the message editor options icon on the far-right and select Hide Translation.

Under the gear, the Hide Translation option is highlighted

Qualtrics also offers an automatic translation feature. If you’d like Google Translate to translate these messages for you, click the message editor options icon on the far-right and select Auto Translate.

Under the gear, the Auto Translate option is highlighted