Skip to main content
Loading...
Skip to article
  • Qualtrics Platform
    Qualtrics Platform
  • Customer Journey Optimizer
    Customer Journey Optimizer
  • XM Discover
    XM Discover
  • Qualtrics Social Connect
    Qualtrics Social Connect

Translate Comments


Was this helpful?


This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The feedback you submit here is used only to help improve this page.

That’s great! Thank you for your feedback!

Thank you for your feedback!


About Translating Comments

We often want to reach as wide an audience as possible. But if the members of our research team don’t speak multiple languages, this can limit our ability to analyze feedback provided in foreign languages. Luckily you can make analyzing respondent feedback easier by translating text responses.

You can translate comments in the Data & Analysis tab. This feature is compatible with Text iQ, response editing, data exports, reporting, and CX Dashboards. This feature is not compatible with API.

By default, all previously collected responses will be translated when you set up the job and then all new responses will be translated within a day of being recorded. For more details, see the Editing Translations section below.

Attention: Text translation requires that you have Advanced Text iQ and that you have Allow Third-Party Comment Translations enabled in the Organization Settings tab. Please note that even if you disable this permission, any comment translations you have started will not stop until you suspend them. For access to Advanced Text iQ, contact your Account Executive or Brand Administrator.
Qtip: This page describes the process of translating text data. To learn how to translate your survey, visit the Translate Survey page.

Translating Your Text Responses

  1. Click on Tools.
    Tools button on the right of the Data & Analysis tab expanded
  2. Select Translate Comments.
  3. Under Translate to, choose 1 language to translate your text into.
    Translate comments window with fields filled out
  4. Under Source Field, select the specific feedback field to translate.
    Qtip: Any field that allows text entry, including Embedded Data, is compatible with Translate Responses. However, you can only translate Embedded Data fields set to the Text type.
  5. Name your new, translated field. By default, the name will be the text of the question plus the language code.
  6. To translate more fields, click Add field to be translated.
    Qtip: Questions that have already been translated will appear greyed out.
  7. By default, Use record User Language and skip records in [chosen language]. You should select this option if your survey has collected data in multiple languages, and you’d like to skip responses that already come in your translation language.
    Qtip: Sometimes you may suspect that the User Language metadata doesn’t match the language of the response. For example, although you only distributed your survey in English, some of the respondents wrote feedback in Spanish. When disabled, this option will ignore the User Language and instead try to detect the correct language, meaning that the system will understand that the Spanish response incorrectly marked as English is in Spanish and will translate this accordingly.
    Qtip: Keep in mind that if responses are labeled with the wrong language, and you have this option enabled, you may see unexpected results with translations.
  8. Click Next.
  9. Review the Summary.
    Summary window listing translations generated

    Qtip: By default, the translation service is Google Cloud Translation’s API. If you’d like to use a different translation service, have a Brand Administrator contact your XM Success Manager for more information about implementing a custom translation integration.
  10. If you’d like to change your details, click Back to return to the previous screen. If everything looks correct, click Begin Translation.
Attention: Only the first 5,000 characters in a single comment will be translated. The total limit per brand per year is 2.5 billion characters.

Depending on the number of responses that need to be translated, the process may take a while and you may need to refresh the page before they appear in Data & Analysis. Notice in the screenshot below that the translation appears in addition to the original version of the text entry question, not as a replacement. You can create as many translations of your text responses as you would like.
Data & Analysis tab with translated text responses displayed below

Attention: You cannot delete a translated text variable. If you are looking to delete the translated comment for only 1 of your respondents, you can delete their entire survey response.

Editing Translations

By default, all previously collected responses will be translated when you set up the job and then all new responses will be translated within a day of being recorded (and often faster). However, when you create a translated text variable, you can decide if you want translations to continue as you collect data, or to stop future responses from being translated.

  1. Click on the column header of the translated text variable.
    Clicking on a data column's header reveals additional menus
  2. Select Edit Translation.
  3. Under the Action column, click Suspend to suspend the translation of incoming responses.
    Translate Comments window
  4. Click Next.
    Next button on lower-right of the Translate Comments window
  5. The Summary will explain that your translated text variable will stop making translations. Click Update to save this change, or Back to cancel.
    Summary window
Qtip: If the Action available to you is Resume, that means future translations are suspended. If the Action available to you is Suspend, that means the survey will continue to translate that field. In the example below, Q1 is not translating new responses to French, but Q2 is.
Resume is displayed next to Q1 and Suspend is displayed next to Q2

Types of Projects Where You Can Translate Comments

This feature is available in just about every type of project where you can collect and analyze data. This includes:

 

FAQs