Change the language of a form

[Philip Worrell]

Anyone know how to change the language of a form?

I hope it is not changing profile or local computer settings.

Just I have an international organisation who want to be able to send forms in different languages.

Thanks

[#2]

No answer 6 months later?

I am also interested in knowing how Forms handle multiple languages. Can we create a single form where text will be localized or we need to create multiple ones?

[#3]

Hi Philip,

The language of the questions written in your form are in the language you wrote them.

So if you want a form to be available in multiple languages, you need to create multiple forms.

Regarding the language of the form application (words like Mandatory, Send, ...), the words used are displayed in the language of the browser. See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/language-settings-for-microsoft-forms-b282f9aa-0fe4-4290-b1... for additional details on this.

Hope this helps.

[#4]

Hi Martin,

The actual question is how to combine forms results (especially with Quiz). Assume you have few hundred people answering the forms, let say few forms on different languages with exactly the same content and you need stats for all people, not for each language group separately. Plus data is constantly updated, like repeating test for employees and entry one for newcomers. Could be done through Excel files, but without Excel connector to results for Quiz it looks bit hard.

[#5]

Hi.

Not sure if you still need a solution to this, but I've just done it myself.

1. First of all, I created my form in English.

2. I then translated it into the other languages I required (I used Google Translate and then had humans quality check the translations).

3. I copied the form I'd created in English and replaced each piece of text with the translated text in the first language.

4. I clicked on the menu icon (the three dots in the top right hand corner) then 'Multilingual'. I changed the primary language to the new language (e.g. from English to French).

5. I copied the URL for the translated form and added the language tag to the end of the URL, e.g. &lang=fr for French or &lang=es for Spanish, etc. (You can find a list of language tags online).

6. I repeated these steps for each language

7. I created a SharePoint list with a column for each question in the form

8. I used Microsoft Flow to build an automated process that does the following: any time a form is submitted, add the content into the relevant column in the SharePoint list

9. I created one Flow per language

From there I have options:

1. I can go to the SharePoint list and download the data into an Excel file at any time

2. I can build a flow that automates the process so that I have an Excel file that's always up to date, i.e. as soon as an entry is submitted, it gets added to the Excel file. Within that Excel file I can already have tabs containing pivot tables that allow quick analysis of large scale data.

3. I can use Power BI to build a dashboard that will make the info easier to view for people who're not Excel experts.

I hope some of that is helpful! 🙂

[#6]

@mscherismithThanks for your solution. Seems to be a adequate solution indeed.

It's too bad not to have a real multilingual solution native ... this should be designed...

[#7]

I believe Forms Pro allows you to change languages as well.

Cheers

Damien

[#8]

Hi @mscherismith 

I have a bunch of multilingual forms but adding the lang parameter to the URL doesn't do anything. It doesn't switch between the languages y configured in my forms; it only changes the user interface (as stated here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/language-settings-for-microsoft-forms-b282f9aa-0fe4-4290-....

I might be skipping some steps since the URL for the form in every language is exactly the same.

Any ideas?

Regards

[#9]

Hi,

In the forms you have :

1. The form content (questions / sentences / answers)
2. The button, messages and Microsoft default interface

When you're following the instructions given in the post you are refering to, you only take care of the point 2 which is the Microsoft default interface. If you change the default language of your browser, then it will display the default Microsoft form interface in the chosen language.

If you want to take care of the point 1 (which is the form content you've created), you'll have to create as much form as you're having other languages. You'll have one form for English, one for French, one for Italian, etc.

There are no (known) way so far to refer to translated labels.

But if you find a way to do it, I'm ofc interested 🙂