- To create a translation package for a survey, in the Illume Survey Manager, click on the survey you want translated and click Translate > Create Package. In order to have access to the Translate menu, your user must have this Feature enabled in your User definition on the Features tab.
- In the ‘Create Survey Translation Package’ window, click on the ‘Translate from:’ dropdown to select the language the survey will be translated from. Do the same from the ‘Translate to:’ dropdown
- In some cases, the user may want to make sure certain text is NOT translated. Examples of items the user may want to exclude from translation include:
- Brand names or product names. These often appear un-translated in other languages.
- Already translated items. If there have been a handful of questions changed in the survey since it was last translated, then it is likely the user will only want a few of those items translated. Excluding the previously translated items saves both time and money.
- To exclude an item from being translated, click the item in the list of translatable strings. Click “Remove from Translation”.
Notice that the word “No” appears in the Translate column to the left of this string, which has been removed for translation. If the user changes their mind, they can select the item again from the list of translatable strings and click “Restore to Translation”.
- Click ‘Save Package’ and save the xml to your computer
- If you are translating to multiple languages, then you must create and save a separate package per language.
Special Translation Package Options
The two options below are mutually exclusive:
- Exclude items with existing translations — If some items in the survey have already been translated into the target language, checking this option removes those items from the translation package. This may save the expense of re-translating text that has already been translated. This option may be used, for example, if the survey is edited after it has already been translated, and the user wants to translate only the latest changes.
- Include text for existing translations — If some items in the survey have already been translated into the target language, checking this option causes the existing translation for each item to be included in the translation package. Whoever translates the package will be able to see the existing translations, and can verify or correct them.
Translation Package Details
The Translation package contains every unique string of text found in your survey, including the text of question prompts, response options, instructions, error messages, button labels, HTML resources, etc. Each unique text string is included only once in the Translation package, regardless of how many times it appears in the survey. For example, if 20 different questions include the response option “I choose not to answer”, the text string “I choose not to answer” appears only once in the translation package. It will be translated once, and when the translation package is imported back into the survey, every instance of the text string “I choose not to answer” will be replaced by the same bit of translated text. This saves time and money by sparing translators from having to translate the same text multiple times. The “Translatable Strings” list includes the following columns:
- Translate – displays whether the text string is marked for translation.
- Appearances – shows the number of times this text string appears in the survey.
- Source – displays the text string in the source language.
- Target – displays the text string in the target language. If the string has not been translated yet, the column will be empty.
The text count at the bottom of the Translation Package window shows the total number of non-unique text strings in the entire survey, the total number of unique strings, and the total number of strings in the translation package.
The number of strings in the package will be equal to the total number of unique strings in the survey, minus any strings you marked for exclusion.