A multilingual survey is one survey with one set of responses, presented in each participant's language. You build it once in a base language, add the other languages, and translate the text — questions, answer options, emails and all. Responses land in the same table regardless of the language used, so analysis stays simple.

1. Add the languages

Open Settings (the gear in the left icon rail) → General. Two fields matter:

• Base language — the language you author in, and the fallback for anything untranslated.
• Survey languages — a multi-select field; type to filter and pick every additional language you need. They appear as chips.

Some languages offer variants — typing "German" offers German, German (easy) and German (informal) — so you can address participants formally or in plain language. The setting saves on its own.

Add your languages before you start translating, and ideally before activation. Everything you translate afterwards is extra work if the language set changes.

2. Translate

Once a survey has at least two languages, you have two ways to translate. Both write to the same place.

Inline, one language at a time

A language switcher appears at the top centre of the editor canvas (the 文A dropdown). Pick a language and the canvas shows that language's content — edit questions, answer options and screens inline exactly as you did in the base language. Good for a quick fix or when you are translating as you build.

Quick translation — the tool for finishing the job

Click the Translations icon (文A) in the left icon rail. This is the screen to use for real translation work: it walks you through every translatable string in a structured way, so nothing is missed in a long survey.

The icon stays inert until a second language exists — hovering shows "Quick translation: Currently there are no additional languages configured for this survey." If you see that, go back to step 1.

Inside, pick your target from the Translate to: dropdown. The content is split into tabs, one per content type:

• Survey title and description
• Welcome and end text
• Question groups
• Questions
• Subquestions
• Answer options
• Invitation email subject
• Reminder email subject
• Confirmation email subject
• Registration email subject
• Basic admin notification subject
• Detailed admin notification subject

Each tab shows two columns: your base-language text on the left, an editable rich-text field on the right. Work down the list, then move to the next tab.

This screen has a Save button and does not autosave. The survey canvas saves by itself; Quick translation does not — click Save before you switch tabs or leave the screen, or the work is lost. It is the single most common way to lose an afternoon of translating.

There is also an Auto Translate button, which fills the target column using Google Translate. Treat it as a first draft to correct, never as a finished translation — it has no idea that "Fair" is a scale point rather than an adjective. On LimeSurvey CE it needs a Google Translate API key entered under Configuration → Global settings → General; on paid LimeSurvey Cloud plans it works without one.

3. Check what participants see

Untranslated strings fall back to the base language, silently. That is a safety net, not a result: a German participant meeting three English answer options will assume the survey is broken. Before sending anything, preview each language and look for stray base-language text — the tail end of long surveys and the end screen are where gaps usually hide.

Participants get two ways to switch language: a dropdown on the welcome page and a switcher in the top-right menu. Both can be removed by editing the theme's language_changer.twig and language_changer_top_menu.twig files, if you would rather pin each participant to one version.

Sending the right version to the right people

• One link per language. On the Share tab, the Survey language version card lets you pick a language and copy the matching link — hand the German link to German participants and they never see the switcher.
• Per-participant language. A participant list has a Language field on every entry (also importable from CSV as a language column). Set it, and each participant's invitation and survey open in their language automatically. This is the cleanest option for closed-access surveys.
• Email templates are per language too. Under Email templates, the language tab switches which version you are editing. Quick translation covers the subjects; translate the bodies on that screen.

Good to know

• Translators don't need full access. Quick translation is a separate survey permission — under survey permissions you can give someone that and nothing else, so they can translate without being able to change your questions or see responses.
• Some display settings are per language. Date format, decimal mark (dot or comma) and the survey alias are set per language — worth checking for languages that write 1.234,56 rather than 1,234.56.
• Keep placeholders identical across languages. {FIRSTNAME} must stay {FIRSTNAME} in every version; translating what's inside the braces breaks the replacement.
• Question codes never change. They are the variable names in your export and are shared by all languages — which is exactly why analysis is unaffected by how many languages you run.

Going further

Multilingual survey reference: https://www.limesurvey.org/manual/Multilingual_survey · Quick-translation reference: https://www.limesurvey.org/manual/Quick-translation