When running international research, translations are essential to reaching non-English speaking populations. Suzy does not provide translation services- we recommend working with a translation vendor in order to translate your surveys. Below is an overview of the translation process and some tips for translating your surveys.
Translation Process:
- Once you’ve programmed your survey in English in the Suzy platform, you’ll be prompted to export your survey into an easy-to-translate Excel file.
- The Excel file will include your survey questions and answer choices (if applicable).
- Please note: Excel translation files are unique to each survey! If you have a cloned survey, the translation excel needs to be downloaded from the cloned survey to begin translations.
- Select a translation vendor of your choice. If you need assistance finding a translation vendor, please reach out to your CSM who can provide recommendations and assistance.
Translation Best Practices:
- We strongly advise against relying on web-based translation tools. These services primarily use a database of translations and context is often lost, which may lead to confused respondents or poor data quality.
- Take cultural considerations into account. Many English words cannot be directly translated
- Be sure to build in translation time into your project timeline. This typically takes up to 3 days, but depends on the translation vendor, survey complexity, etc.
- Make sure you only send FINAL translation documents (pulled from the Suzy platform after finalizing your survey in English) to be translated. This ensures that you have the most up to date translations and can smoothly upload and launch after receiving your translated survey.
- Please note- when fielding open ended questions in a survey run in another language, Suzy does not provide translation services for these answer options. Please keep this in mind when considering open ended questions in your survey!
For an in-depth walk through of the translation portion of the Suzy Global platform, please click here.