Your organization may require you to have language variants of all or the most important forms. OpenForms does not have an automatic translation feature.
Form authors can assist browsers in recognizing the form’s language by specifying the language in the settings.
To do this:
- Go to the form Settings > General settings.
- Under Set and forget, use the Language drop-down menu to choose the language for the form.
- Select Save general settings.
- Save and Publish your form.
If a respondent’s browser is set to a language other than English and all pages are automatically translated using the browser’s translation tool, then an OpenForm opened via a link will be translated as well. However, the following applies:
- These are automatic browser translations and are not verified, so we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the translation.
- Embedded OpenForms are not translated, even if the rest of the page on which they sit is translated by the browser. Auto-translate only occurs when you link to the form.
- If you create a language variant and specify the language for that variant, then the browser will not apply its translation tool to that variant.
While this is a helpful setting, we recommend manually creating forms for language variants. Creating a new form for each language variant allows you to ensure translation accuracy for all aspects of the form. You can translate the field labels, descriptions, options, button and label text, messages, and notifications, creating a form specifically for speakers of that language.
Admins may also want to create translated lists and field sets for common questions to speed up the translation process.
Having manually translated forms also lets you link to the forms separately from your corporate website. If you use OpenCities, and use language variants for content pages, you can link or embed the form that matches the language variant for a more seamless experience.
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