Translate story forms

In your story form, you can provide participants with a choice of languages. For example, a three-language story form might start like this.

When a participant chooses a language from the list, the form will redraw itself in that language. When the participant submits the form, NarraFirma will save the participant's language choice as a question you can graph.

NarraFirma supports multi-lingual story forms using an optional translation dictionary. For each piece of text that is to be displayed on the story form (or in the questions it references), a translation dictionary stores alternative texts to be displayed in other languages. This page of NarraFirma is where you can create and edit a story form's translation dictionary.

1. Choose the story form you want to translate.
2. Enter a default language in which the form will appear when participants have not chosen a language.
3. Enter a question participants will answer as they choose a language. (Tip: It's a good idea to write your choose-a-language question in every language you intend to support, as in the example above.)
4. Enter a list of additional languages you want to support (one per line).
5. Choose Create or update translation dictionary from the drop-down list of actions, then click Do it. Many empty text boxes will appear, one for each text-language combination.
6. Fill in the translations for each text. Do not translate the explanations that are shown after each text (in a smaller, italic font). They are meant to help you understand the context in which each text is used.
7. Alternatively, you can export your translation dictionary to a CSV file, enter your translations there, and import the file. (Do not edit the default-language texts. Save the file as CSV with UTF-8 character encoding.)
8. Periodically test your story form by choosing Preview story form and clicking Do it. Run through each language choice, making sure the form reads correctly.

The translation facility in NarraFirma is a simple one. It matches each translatable piece of text to one or more additional-language versions of that piece of text. NarraFirma has no idea where these translatable texts belong on the story form. It only knows, for example, that instead of writing "How you feel about this story?" it should (sometimes) write "Que pensez-vous de cette histoire?"

This means that if you enter translations for a text, then change the original text (in its question or story form), your translations of that text will become orphaned, or detached from the question or form. They will still be stored in the question or form, but they will never be displayed, because the original piece of text to which they are linked no longer exists.

When this happens, there is an easy fix. Choose Show orphaned translations from the drop-down list of actions, then click Do it. Copy each of the translated texts shown, and paste it into the text box for that field's new translatable text.

To minimize the need to fix orphaned translations like this, we recommend that you design and test your story form in its default language before you enter any translations.

Orphaned translations stay in the story form until you remove them. To remove them, choose Remove orphaned translations, then click Do it.

The one other connection between this page and other pages in NarraFirma is that translated story forms produce a "Language" question, the results of which you can graph in the Catalysis section of NarraFirma.