Where to find the translations
Open the survey and go to the Translate tab. You will see every language of this survey listed, with a Language, Progress, Preview and Actions column. Progress counts how many translatable elements are filled in for that language — question texts, descriptions, answer options, survey texts and email texts. A language is only complete at 100%. Click a row to open the editor for that language underneath.The tab appears if Multilingual Surveys and Dashboards is enabled for your account. Surveys that take their questions from another survey cannot manage languages here — they follow the survey they were derived from.
What the source language is
The source language is the language the survey was created in. It always sits at the top of the list, marked with a yellow star and a Source label, and it serves as the template: in the editor the source text sits on the left and your translation next to it on the right. If a target language is missing a translation, the survey falls back to the source text for that element. The hint below the list says the same thing: “If a translation is missing, the element is shown in the source language.” The source language deliberately cannot be edited in the Translate tab. Select its row and every field is locked, with the note “Source language: content is maintained in the survey itself and cannot be edited here.” You edit it where it is written:- Survey name, Welcome message and Thank you message in the Details tab
- Questions, descriptions and answer options in the Questions tab
- The subject and body of the invitation email in the Email Template tab
Which language you are currently editing in
At the top of the survey, next to a globe icon, there is a language code such as EN or DE. It tells you which language you are currently viewing and editing the survey in; the Language of the survey tooltip says so too. That code follows your own profile language:- If the survey exists in your profile language, you see that one.
- Otherwise Honestly shows English, if the survey has an English version.
- Otherwise the first language available for the survey.
Adding a language and translating it
Click Add language below the list and pick a target language. The new language appears in the list straight away, starting at 0%. Select it to open the editor. It is split into sections, each showing how many fields are still missing:- Questions & answers — question text, description and answer options, question by question
- Survey texts — Survey name, Welcome message and Thank you message
- Emails — Subject and Body of the invitation email
Automatic suggestions
Next to each field, Suggest translation generates a suggestion for that one field. Suggest all missing translations fills every empty field in the language in one go. Suggestions are only placed into the form, not saved. Check them, then click Save.Have automatically generated translations checked by someone who speaks the language before you activate the survey. Suggestions do not always get technical terms and forms of address right.
Find & replace
Find & replace pushes a wording change through a whole language in one go. You set the Scope — Questions, Answer options, Survey texts, Emails — see every match in a preview before applying it, and choose which ones to replace. Undo reverts the replacement as long as you have not saved yet. If a text contains the survey name placeholder, the translation has to contain it too. The editor flags it when it is missing.Changing the source language
You can make any other language the source language — but only once it is 100% translated. Until then the star in its row stays grey, and the change is rejected with “This language is not fully translated yet.” Click the star in the row of a fully translated language, or use Change source language below the list. If no language qualifies yet, Honestly tells you that no other language is currently fully translated.Deleting a language
The bin icon in a row removes a language together with all its translations. You confirm by typing the name of the language. The source language cannot be deleted. Make another language the source language first.Letting someone outside Honestly translate
As soon as at least one target language exists, Invite a reviewer appears in the top right. It generates a link that lets someone without a Honestly account translate — a colleague in a local office just as much as a translation agency. You give the link a name so you can tell them apart, and select the languages that person should work on. The reviewer sees only those languages plus the source language for reference; survey setup, responses, dashboards and all other languages stay hidden.- The link is valid for 14 days.
- For security reasons it is shown only once — copy it right away.
- Generate a new link resets the validity period and invalidates the previous link immediately.
- Withdraw revokes access immediately.
Supported languages
Honestly knows 42 languages. Which of them you can pick under Add language depends on your account. These nine are available to every account:- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Albanian
- Bosnian
- Bulgarian
- Catalan
- Chinese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Estonian
- Finnish
- Greek
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Irish
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Luxembourgish
- Macedonian
- Maltese
- Marathi
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Romanian
- Scottish Gaelic
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Swedish
- Ukrainian
- Welsh
What to keep in mind after translating
- New or changed questions start out empty in the target languages. Progress then drops below 100% — translate them before you activate the survey.
- The language a person sees in the survey and in the invitation email follows the language set in their employee profile.
- For accounts without the Translate tab, email texts are still maintained per language directly in the Email Template tab: Translate an email.