Why Should Businesses Translate Their Surveys?

Posted on: May 22, 2023 by admin

If you’re using surveys to gather feedback about your business, you’ll know how helpful these insights can be. But if you’re only providing your surveys in English, you may be missing out on important feedback from customers who speak another language. Learn how you can use translated surveys to better understand your linguistically diverse clients and respond dynamically to changing customer needs.

What Is Survey Translation?

Survey translation is the process of translating survey questions into another language to make them accessible to speakers of that language. Once the survey has been completed, the survey answers will need to be translated into a language that the researcher and business can understand so that the data can be collated.

What Does Survey Translation Involve?

Survey translation is not a simple process of word-for-word translation. There are multiple steps involved in creating a high-quality survey translation:

1. The translator should be informed about the social, cultural, ethnic and linguistic characteristics of the target audience.
2. The translator should seek to understand how and where the survey is to be administered so that they understand the context in which it will be read.
3. The translator reviews the survey in the original language.
4. The translator identifies any terms and concepts that may be difficult to translate.
5. The translator discusses these areas with the survey writer to gain extra clarification to create the best possible translation for those challenging phrases.
6. The translator creates the survey in the new language.
7. The survey is reviewed by another translator or focus group to identify all issues and errors.
8. The final survey translation is mass-produced and given out to recipients.

The survey translation process is detailed because the translator needs to ensure that the survey questions can be easily understood. Lack of clarity or any linguistic errors in the translated questions will drastically lower response rates. As respondents are likely to simply skip questions that they find confusing or vague.

The Benefits Of Survey Translation

There are two key benefits of translating your surveys to make them accessible to speakers of another language:

• Showing your clients that you value their feedback. Research has shown that the overwhelming majority of consumers want companies to ask for their input. When you provide translations of your surveys, you are telling your culturally and linguistically diverse clients that you value them and their input. Even if many of your culturally and linguistically diverse customers can read and write in English, providing a survey in their native language demonstrates an inclusive business culture.

• Getting more accurate data to drive business decisions. If a significant portion of your customer base (or desired target market) speaks another language other than English, their data is essential to business success. Excluding significant groups from your data collection can lead to business blunders.

What Types of Surveys Can Be Translated?

Any type of written survey can be translated. Some of the survey types you may wish to have translated include:

• Open-ended questionnaires
• Multiple choice surveys
• Text message mini surveys

You can also engage an interpreter if you wish to run in-person interviews or focus groups in another language for more insights.

Providing translated surveys is an effective way to boost business insights and appeal to a culturally and linguistically diverse customer base. The process of producing quality survey translations can be complicated however, a well-trained professional translator will be easily able to produce a translation that can be easily read and understood.

If you’re looking to give your business a competitive advantage by using survey translation, contact Speak Your Language today. Speak Your Language are experts in survey translation and can produce high-quality translations in a variety of languages.