Languages and translations

Every form is written in one language, and can be offered in up to 10 more. People who open it get it in their own language if it's one you've translated, and can switch with the menu at the top of the form.

The form's language

Open Settings → Languages in the form and choose the Form language: the language you write your questions in. Everything hootform says around your questions follows it — buttons, keyboard hints, error messages, "Question 3 of 8", the built-in thank-you screen — so a form written in German never says "Next".

You can write in any of 28 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai.

The form language is free on every plan. A form built with AI from a description written in another language gets that language automatically.

Translating a form

Under Translations, pick one or more languages in Add languages, then select Add language (or Add 3 languages, and so on). Each language shows how much of the form is translated so far. From there:

• Auto-translate translates everything that isn't translated yet, or that changed since it was, in one go. What you already translated yourself is left alone.
• Edit opens the translation beside your own text, one field at a time. Type into any field to translate it yourself, or to fix what auto-translate wrote.
• Remove takes the language off the form.

Translations are saved with your other edits and go live when you publish, like any other change.

What gets translated

The form's name (shown above the welcome screen's title and in the browser tab), question titles and descriptions, choices, matrix rows and columns, scale labels, placeholders, consent text, button labels, follow-up questions you wrote, picture descriptions, the welcome screen, every ending, and the search title and description. Everything hootform writes itself is already translated.

Your answers don't change between languages: someone who picks "Rojo" is recorded as picking the same choice as someone who picked "Red", so the responses table, Insights, logic and the CSV all read the same whatever language people answered in.

When you change the original

If you edit a question — or rename the form — after translating it, its translation is marked Out of date, and respondents see your new wording in the form's own language until it's translated again. That way a translation can never describe something you've since changed — a choice you renamed is never offered under its old name. Select Auto-translate to catch up, or open Edit, where Keep translation marks one as still right, for an edit like a typo fix that didn't change the meaning.

Answer recall

Keep every {{answer:…}} and {{hidden:…}} token in a translation, wherever it fits the sentence. A translation that loses one is marked Check the answer tokens and isn't shown until it's fixed, because it would show a blank where the original shows an answer. Auto-translate keeps them for you. See answer recall.

Which language people see

In this order:

1. The language in the link, if it has one: add ?lang= and the language's code, like ?lang=es. Settings → Languages lists each language's link, which is handy for sending the right one to each audience. It works with hidden fields and embedding too.
2. The language they were answering in before, if they come back to finish.
3. Their browser's language, if you've translated the form into it.
4. The form's own language.

The language menu at the top of every screen lets people switch at any point, and they carry on from the question they were on.

In your responses

Each response records the language it was answered in. It shows in the response's details, the CSV export gets a Language column once the form has translations, and webhooks include it as language.

Things to know

• Arabic and Hebrew forms read right to left.
• Follow-up questions written by AI are asked in the respondent's language.