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Translate a survey automatically

Fill in the missing texts of every language in one click, with machine translation you review before respondents see it.

Machine translation fills in the texts a language is still missing, so you start from a full draft instead of an empty page. It is off until an admin turns it on, and it sits on top of multi-language surveys. It is on the Team plan and above.

When pixl is set up on this server and nothing else is, an admin can turn translation on from the builder in one step: open Languages and choose Turn on translation with pixl.

Turn it on (admins)

  1. Open Settings → Machine translation and turn on Translate surveys.
  2. Choose the providers you allow. A provider that isn't set up on this server is marked Not configured. DeepL, Azure AI Translator, Google Cloud Translation, Claude, pixl (Groq) and a self-hosted open-source engine are supported, and each language goes to the best allowed one: DeepL first where it is long established, Azure then Google where it isn't, such as Croatian, then the self-hosted engine, Claude and pixl. You can prefer one provider. If nothing may leave your own servers, allow only the self-hosted engine.
  3. Add your company and product names under Do not translate, choose formal or informal wording, and set a monthly character budget.

The allowed vendors become subprocessors for your organization while it is on, and the page lists what they receive and what they never do. The self-hosted engine is run by whoever runs wrkflow for you, so it is not a subprocessor.

Translate

  1. In the builder, open Languages and choose Add languages with automatic translation, or add a language and choose Translate missing texts. You can translate one language or all of them.
  2. The survey is saved first, and every text a language is missing is translated. Texts you already translated are never replaced.
  3. Each machine translation is marked Machine translated · needs review. Read it, change what needs changing, or choose Mark as reviewed (Mark all as reviewed does the whole language). Changing a text yourself counts as reviewing it.
  4. Turn on Offered to respondents and publish.
Respondents who read a language that still has unreviewed machine translations see a small Automatically translated note next to the language switcher, in their language. It goes away once every text is reviewed and you publish again.

What is kept and what is never sent

  • Piping such as {{first_name|there}}, placeholders, links and your do-not-translate terms come back exactly as they were. A translation that loses one is refused and the next provider is tried.
  • Personal data in a text, such as an email address, is sent masked and put back as you wrote it.
  • Texts of questions marked sensitive are never sent. They stay missing, and the editor says how many, so a person translates them.
  • Nothing about respondents is involved: only the survey's own words are sent.

When it doesn't work

  • If a provider fails, the next allowed one is tried. If none can, the texts stay missing and the message says what to do next.
  • When the month's character budget is used up, nothing more is sent until next month. An admin can raise the budget.
  • After a downgrade from Team, translating stops. Existing translations stay, and an admin can still turn the feature off.

Still stuck? Talk to us and we’ll help you sort it out.