The goals of "last mile" translation:
Reduce total manual translation time by modifying machine-translated content, rather than starting from scratch.
Collect all responses into one place for analysis to reduce manual data migration after the survey closes.
Automatically segment project participants by language to simplify analysis and language-specific follow-up communications.
Note: It is important to finalize your survey in English before creating a translation. Otherwise, you'll need to make edits to each translation of the survey each time you make edits to the original. Changes made to the survey in English will not automatically update in the translated version and will require last-mile translation.
If you'd prefer video to the text intro below, here's a primer with updates:
Creating a custom translation of a project or survey
In the Project Admin interface, click the Settings tab for your project and then go to the Build Custom Link section.
From here you can setup a new custom link for your page and specify language. You can optionally assign participants who arrive at this link to a specific segment:
Once you've created a custom link specific to a language, the link will appear in the links table below the the Language column, click on the Gear icon:
Clicking the Edit Translation gear will open a page featuring the machine-translated version of your survey:
Note that last-mile translation is designed to be used with Question + Content projects only. The upper-nav bar in the screenshot above will only appear with this project type. If you wish to perform last-mile translation on a Question Series project, you can temporarily change the project type to Question + Content, perform your edits and then revert the format to Question Series.
Editing Questions, Content & Images with the Form Editor
Step 1: Click the "Form Editor" button in the page top bar.
Step 2: The Manual Translation Form will open as a new interface where you can customize all survey question language as well as content blocks.
Step 3: Once you've made edits, at the bottom of the form interface, click Save changes. Your survey will reload to show your modified translation.
Editing Images that have language-specific text
You can swap out the header banner image in the form editor:
You can also change out content and images content blocks to show different images and formatted text using the content block editor:
Making minor edits for small UI components - use "Click to Translate":
Note: Click-to-Translate is meant for situations where the form editor does not include a specific element. It is a great tool for making small tweaks, but is performed by the user's browser and is less predictable than the hard-coded "Form Editor" approach.
Step 1: Click the "Click to Translate" button in the top bar.
This button will now turn red and display the label: Stop Translating (2). When you are finished editing your survey, to save your changes, click on the Stop Translating button.
Step 2: Click anywhere in your survey (1) to edit the content in the Translation popup (2). After making the required changes, click Save (3).
Tip: Click Save & Add Another to make additional changes.
Participants arriving at the language-specific link will now see the translated content with the updates you entered manually.
*Note: if your click-to-translate changes affect an element other than the item you intended to translate, you can step backwards and Undo changes using the "Undo" button at the top of the page:
Sharing access with a third-party translator
Tip: you can send a contractor or third-party translator the URL of your content to translate or review.
At the top right of your survey, click Translator Link:
You can now copy and paste the custom URL for this survey into an email and send it to your translator. Feel free to share this article as well to provide direction on the ins and outs of the Form Editor and Click to Translate.
Editing Translation History
Changes made in Last Mile Translation can be revised with the history feature. By clicking on the history icon on the upper-navigation toolbar, you can access the history of all edits made.
The icons to the left of each row allow you to edit, delete or copy a given change. Each row is for individual element that was translated either automatically or manually.
For editing a translated element, make the changes in the window and then click either "Save Changes" to implement your changes or "Delete Translation" to delete the change entirely. The latter is the same action as clicking the red trashcan icon for the individual row in the above screenshot.
If you've made it this far, you're already a pro! We wish you the best with your translation work to improve the quality of translation and build greater trust with residents.