System Translations

As of v0.4.2, surveydown supports the ability to set the system language for all system messages (i.e. text elements such as button labels and warnings) and to provide the language specific format for date type questions. You can also customize the system messages by providing a translations.yml file in your root project directory.

Setting the Language

To set the language of your survey, you can either define the system-language key in YAML of survey.qmd, or use the system_language argument in the sd_server() function in your app.R file. For example, to set the survey language to Spanish, you would write:

Either in YAML of survey.qmd:

---
system-language: es
---

Or in the app.R file:

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  sd_server(
    system_language = "es"
  )
}

When setting the language, make sure to use a valid language code. The list of supported language codes is the same as those supported by Shiny’s dateInput() (a full list of codes is provided at the bottom of this page).

For now, surveydown comes with built-in translations for the following languages:

  • en - English (Default)
  • de - German
  • es - Spanish
  • fr - French
  • it - Italian
  • zh-CN - Chinese (Simplified)

These translations cover all system messages, meaning you can simply set the language and all default messages should be in the chosen language.

Custom Messages

If you want to customize the system translations or provide translations in a language that is not yet supported, you can create a translations.yml file in the root folder of your survey project using the following function:

surveydown::sd_create_translations(language = 'en')

This will create a file named translations.yml in your root project directory with the language set to whatever you provided as the language argument. You can modify any of the system messages in this file to be used in your survey.

Below is an example of the translations.yml file for all default English messages. The keys represent the system message identifiers, and the values are the translated messages:

en:
  cancel: Cancel
  confirm_exit: Confirm Exit
  sure_exit: Are you sure you want to exit the survey?
  submit_exit: Submit and Exit
  warning: Warning
  required: Please answer all required questions before proceeding.
  rating_title: Before you go...
  rating_text: 'Rate your survey experience:'
  rating_scale: from 1-poor to 5-excellent
  next: Next
  exit: Exit Survey
  close_tab: Please close this tab manually to exit the survey.
  choose_option: Choose an option...
  click: Click here
  redirect: Redirecting in
  seconds: seconds
  new_tab: Opens in a new tab
  redirect_error: 'Error: This text won''t trigger any redirection...'

When you run your survey, surveydown will detect the translations.yml file in your root folder and use it to override the default translations. If you provide translations for a language not supported by default, you can use the language argument in sd_server() to set your custom language code. Note that the chosen language still must be from the current list of supported languages.

For example, suppose you added translations for Portuguese in your translations.yml:

pt:
  next: 'Próximo'
  exit: 'Sair da Pesquisa'
  # ... other messages

In your app.R file, set the language to Portuguese:

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  sd_server(
    language = "pt"
  )
}

It is also possible to have multiple translations for different translations in a single translations.yml file and simply select the required language one within the sd_server() function with the matching country code.

Overriding Specific Messages

You don’t have to provide translations for all system messages. If you only want to change specific messages, you can provide translations only for those messages, and surveydown will use the default translations for any missing messages.

For example, to customize only all “Next” button label in English, you could include the following in your translations.yml file:

en:
  next: 'Continue'

Since English is the default language, the language doesn’t even have to be defined in the sd_server() function in this case.

Button Defaults

The translations also apply to default labels in sd_next(), sd_close(), and sd_redirect(). For example, if you use sd_next() without specifying a label, it will use the translated label based on the chosen language.

# In your survey.qmd file

# This will display "Weiter" if language is set to "de" in your app.R file
sd_next()

However, it is still possible to manually adjust the translations in the mentioned functions inside the survey.qmd file using the label argument for each case.

Note

If you separately render your survey.qmd file before running your app.R file, these buttons messages may appear in English in the rendered survey.html file in your root project folder. This is because the survey file doesn’t “know” the language setting until you locally run your app.R at least once. But don’t worry - just run the app.R file once and the language will then be set. Also, the language setting will always be used when the app is run regardless of what the local survey.html file looks like.

Notes

  • When providing custom translations, make sure the keys match exactly the expected message identifiers.
  • If you create the translations.yml file manually, please note that each text element containing a : character must be written in quotation marks and the last line must contain a line break.
  • If you provide an invalid language code in language, surveydown will fall back to English.
  • If a message is not translated in your translations.yml file, surveydown will use the default translation for that message.

Full Language Code List

The full list of supported language codes can be found in the documentation for shiny::dateInput(). We list them here as a quick reference:

  • ar - Arabic
  • az - Azerbaijani
  • bg - Bulgarian
  • bs - Bosnian
  • ca - Catalan
  • cs - Czech
  • cy - Welsh
  • da - Danish
  • de - German
  • el - Greek
  • en - English (Default)
  • en-AU - English (Australia)
  • en-GB - English (UK)
  • eo - Esperanto
  • es - Spanish
  • et - Estonian
  • eu - Basque
  • fa - Persian
  • fi - Finnish
  • fo - Faroese
  • fr - French
  • fr-CH - French (Switzerland)
  • gl - Galician
  • he - Hebrew
  • hr - Croatian
  • hu - Hungarian
  • hy - Armenian
  • id - Indonesian
  • is - Icelandic
  • it - Italian
  • it-CH - Italian (Switzerland)
  • ja - Japanese
  • ka - Georgian
  • kh - Khmer
  • kk - Kazakh
  • ko - Korean
  • kr - Korean
  • lt - Lithuanian
  • lv - Latvian
  • me - Montenegrin
  • mk - Macedonian
  • mn - Mongolian
  • ms - Malay
  • nb - Norwegian Bokmål
  • nl - Dutch
  • nl-BE - Dutch (Belgium)
  • no - Norwegian
  • pl - Polish
  • pt - Portuguese
  • pt-BR - Portuguese (Brazil)
  • ro - Romanian
  • rs - Serbian
  • rs-latin - Serbian (Latin)
  • ru - Russian
  • sk - Slovak
  • sl - Slovenian
  • sq - Albanian
  • sr - Serbian
  • sr-latin - Serbian (Latin)
  • sv - Swedish
  • sw - Swahili
  • th - Thai
  • tr - Turkish
  • uk - Ukrainian
  • vi - Vietnamese
  • zh-CN - Chinese (Simplified)
  • zh-TW - Chinese (Traditional)
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