Multilingual forms

Introduction

With Formcrafts, you can easily create a form in one language (e.g., English) and then add translations for other languages—such as German or French—so your users automatically see the form in their preferred language.

If the preferred language of the user’s browser matches one of the translations you’ve added, the form will automatically be displayed in that language.

Otherwise, the default language will be used.

Default language

On the top-left corner of the form editor, click on Languages. This will open the form languages panel right below.

Here you can choose a default language. Your default language is the base language in which you initially build your form. Formcrafts will automatically translate error messages for this language and adjust the form’s direction (left-to-right or right-to-left) accordingly.

Adding languages

You can use the + Add language button to create a new translation for your form. Here’s an example of the German language tab:

Most languages also support Auto translate, which can help you get started with the translation by automatically translating the form items.

You can also use the Update button to auto-translate a specific item.

Keeping translations in sync

What happens when you edit a form label, or add another form field? Whenever you change a form label or add a new field, Formcrafts flags any existing translations for that item as invalid. This helps ensure you update translations when your form evolves.

Here’s an example. Let’s say our form is fully translated. We then change the label of a field from First name to Full name. This item will be marked as invalid in all languages, allowing you to update the translations.

Next to each language name you can view the number of invalid items. Here’s an example of the French language tab with an invalid translation:

Here you can click on the Update button to auto-translate the item. You can also manually update the text, and click on Mark as valid.

Displaying the correct language

When a user opens your form, Formcrafts detects the browser’s default language setting. If it matches one of your defined translations, that version of the form is shown; otherwise, the default language is used.

If the browser language does not match any of the translations, the form will be displayed in the default language.

It is also possible to override the language by adding a query parameter to the form URL. For example, you can add ?lang=fr to the form URL to force the form to be displayed in French.