# Translating a Survey in Excel Source: PaperSurvey.io Help Center URL: https://www.papersurvey.io/help/form-design/article/translating-surveys-with-excel --- The built-in Auto-translate button is fine for a first draft, but surveys that go to real respondents usually want a human eye, or at least a better model, on the wording. PaperSurvey lets you export every piece of text in a survey to a single Excel file, get it translated outside the app, and import the completed file straight back into the survey. Who does the translating is up to you. The same file works for a translation agency, a bilingual colleague, or an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude. Nobody outside your team needs a PaperSurvey account, and the file remembers which survey and language it belongs to, so importing puts every string back in the right place. *Note: Like all multi-language functionality, this requires an Enterprise plan or higher. Academic plans for universities also include it.* ## Exporting the file 1. Go to **Settings**, then the **Exports** tab. 2. Scroll to **Survey translations**. 3. Pick the **Survey** you want translated. 4. Set **Translate from**. This defaults to the survey's own language, but you can pick any language the survey already has content in. That is useful when your English version is the one that has been proofread, or when a translator works from a language other than your original. 5. Set **Translate into**, the language you want back. 6. Click **Export**. You get an .xlsx file named after the survey and the target language, for example `Patient Feedback - German translations.xlsx`. Send that file to your translator as it is. ## What is inside the file The workbook has three tabs. **How to translate** opens first. It is a short brief written for the translator: how many strings the file contains, live counters for how many are still missing, the steps to follow, and the rules on placeholders and formatting. Translators who have never seen PaperSurvey do not need any further instruction from you. **Translations** holds the work. One row per piece of text, with these columns: - **Item**, a plain-English description of where the text sits in the survey, such as "Question 7, help text", "Question 7, answer option 3", "Question 4, row 2" or "Survey title". The numbers match the ones on the printed survey, so a translator can point at a row and you know exactly which question they mean. - **Source**, the original text in the language you exported from. - **Translation**, the only column the translator types into. - **Status**, which reads Missing in red and flips to Translated in green as each cell is filled. It is filterable, so a translator can show only the rows still outstanding. - **Notes (optional)**, for queries back to you. Everything except Translation and Notes is locked, so the reference column, the item description and the source text cannot be edited by accident. Filtering still works. If a locked cell is changed anyway, it turns red, which is a quick way to spot a file that has been rebuilt or mangled in transit. **Do not edit** is the third tab. It carries an encrypted reference code recording which survey and which language the file is for. That is what lets the import detect everything automatically. If the tab is deleted or the code altered, the file can no longer be imported and you will need to export again. The export covers the survey title, cover page text, footers, web survey completion and confirmation email text, and for every question the question text, help text, scale end labels, the "other" label and all answer options. Grid rows are included, labelled by the grid they belong to. ## What must be kept exactly as it is The file's first tab already carries the full brief, so a translator who opens it is told all of this. Repeat it anyway when you write to an agency, and put it in your prompt if you are using an AI tool, because these are the things that break a survey rather than merely reading awkwardly. Translate the words. Leave everything in this list alone: - **Placeholders such as `{{ First Name }}`.** These are replaced with real values when the survey is printed or shown. Keep the braces, the spacing and the name inside them exactly as they appear, in the original language. A translated placeholder name silently stops matching and the value never appears. - **Anything in square brackets:** `[b]`, `[/b]`, `[center]`, `[color=#FF0000]`, `[highlight=#FFFF00]`, `[small]`, `[large]`, `[u]`, `[img]`, `[hr]`, `[br]`, `[pagebreak]`, and the `[paper]` and `[web]` blocks that control which medium a piece of text appears in. Translate the words between the tags, never the tags themselves. `[center]Welcome[/center]` becomes `[center]Bienvenido[/center]`, not `[centrar]Bienvenido[/centrar]`. Translating a tag name is the single most common way an AI assistant breaks a survey. - **The symbols that carry formatting:** `**` for bold, `_` for italic, `__` for underline, `~~` for strikethrough, and a leading `#` for a heading. They must end up in the same places around the translated words, so `**Important**` becomes `**Importante**`. - **Everything inside `[img]...[/img]`.** That is a file name, not text anyone reads. - **Colour and size values** such as `#FF0000`, `3cm` or `12pt` wherever they appear inside a tag. - **The pipe characters `|` that draw a table,** and the number of columns between them. - **Line breaks inside a cell.** Three lines in, three lines out. - **Numbers, codes, web addresses and email addresses,** unless a number is part of an ordinary sentence. And the shape of the file itself: - **Do not add, delete, reorder or sort away rows.** Each row is matched back to the survey by a hidden code in column A, so a translation has to stay on the row whose source text it belongs to. - **Do not edit the Reference, Item, Source or Status columns.** They are locked, and anything changed in them is highlighted red. - **Do not add or remove columns or tabs, and do not rename the tabs.** - **Do not copy the rows into a new spreadsheet.** A rebuilt file has lost the "Do not edit" tab and can no longer be imported. - **Save as .xlsx.** Google Sheets and LibreOffice are both fine, as long as the file comes back in Excel format with all three tabs intact. Two things are safe and worth saying out loud: a blank cell keeps whatever translation is already in the survey rather than wiping it, so a partly finished file can be returned safely, and the Notes column is free for the translator to use. Finally, translated text is often longer than the original, German especially. Ask for anything that has grown a lot to be flagged, and check the page count when you preview the translated version. ## Using an AI assistant instead The export is a plain table of source text and empty cells, which is exactly the shape an AI assistant handles well. Uploading the file to ChatGPT, Claude or a similar tool is a reasonable option for internal surveys, pilots, or a solid draft that a native speaker then reviews. One thing decides whether it works: **the file that comes back must still be the file that went out.** AI tools very often rebuild a workbook from scratch, which quietly drops the "Do not edit" tab or renames the "Translations" tab. PaperSurvey then cannot tell which survey the file belongs to, and the import is refused. So treat the assistant as a source of text, not as a file editor: 1. Upload the exported file and ask for the translations as a list or table, not as a new file. 2. Open your original exported .xlsx and paste the translations into the Translation column, keeping the rows in their original order. 3. Save and import as usual. If the assistant does return a workbook, check before importing that all three tabs are still there with their original names and that the row order is unchanged. If anything is off, fall back to pasting into the original file. A prompt along these lines works well: > Attached is a survey translation file. Translate the "Source" column into [target language]. Give me the results as a two-column table of Item and Translation, in the same row order, with no rows skipped and no rows merged. > > Translate the words only. Keep all of the following exactly as it appears: > - Placeholders such as {{ First Name }}, including the braces, the spacing and the name inside them. Never translate the text inside a placeholder. > - Anything in square brackets, for example [b], [/b], [center], [color=#FF0000], [small], [img], [paper], [web]. Translate the words between the tags, never the tag names themselves. [center]Welcome[/center] becomes [center]Bienvenido[/center]. > - The formatting symbols **, _, __, ~~ and a leading #, in the same positions around the translated words. > - Everything inside [img]...[/img], which is a file name. > - Colour and size values such as #FF0000 or 3cm. > - Table pipe characters |, line breaks within a cell, numbers, codes, URLs and email addresses. > > This is a survey, so keep answer options short and keep the tone and formality of the original, and translate a given term the same way every time it appears. For rating scales, use the wording respondents in the target language normally see rather than a literal translation. > > Flag any row where the translation is much longer than the original, or where the meaning is ambiguous. The instruction about scales matters more than it looks. Labels such as "Strongly agree" or "Somewhat satisfied" have conventional equivalents that respondents in each language recognise, and a literal translation reads oddly and can shift how people answer. Whichever tool you use, the import preview is still your safety net: nothing is written to the survey until you have looked at every change. For anything customer-facing, regulated or academic, have a native speaker read the translated survey before you print it. ## Importing the completed file 1. Return to **Settings**, then **Exports**, and the **Survey translations** section. 2. Drag the completed file onto the upload area, or click to select it. 3. A review window opens showing every change. Nothing has been saved yet. 4. Check the changes and click **Apply**. The review lists each row as new, updated or unchanged, with the current text struck through beside the incoming translation. Two warnings are worth reading carefully: - **Original text changed.** Someone edited that question or option after the file was exported, so the translator was working from wording that is no longer current. Check those rows before applying. - **No longer in survey.** The question or option has been deleted since the export. Those rows are simply ignored. Unchanged rows are hidden from the review to keep it short. Once applied, the target language is added to the survey's languages automatically if it was not there already. You can then switch to it with the language selector in the survey menu, preview it, and create a printable version. ## Working with several languages Export one file per target language. Each file is tied to its own language, so you can have five translators working in parallel on five files for the same survey and import them in any order. Imports for the same survey are processed one at a time, so there is no risk of two of them overwriting each other. ## Updating a survey after it has been translated If you edit questions after translations are in place, export the file again for that language. The Translation column comes back pre-filled with the existing translations, so the translator only has to fill in the empty rows and revisit anything whose source text has changed. Filtering the Status column to Missing shows exactly what is new. ## Common problems **"This file is not a PaperSurvey translation export."** The "Do not edit" tab was removed or the reference code was altered, often by copying the rows into a fresh workbook. Export again and translate in the original file. **"The file could not be read as an Excel workbook."** The file was saved in another format, such as .csv or .ods. Save it as .xlsx and retry. Files must be under 10 MB. **Rows could not be matched.** The questions or options they referred to were deleted after the export. Those translations have nowhere to go and are skipped. **A very long piece of text is missing from the file.** Excel caps a single cell at just under 33,000 characters. Anything longer is left out of the sheet rather than being silently cut off, and needs translating directly in the survey editor. ## Related articles - [Creating Multi-Language Paper Surveys](/help/form-design/article/multi-language-paper-surveys.md) - [Question Types and Examples](/help/form-design/article/question-types-and-examples.md) --- Need more? The complete PaperSurvey.io help center and blog is available as a single document at https://www.papersurvey.io/llms-full.txt.