Ok thanks!

Note that when editing an .lss file to change the base language of a survey (say from english to french) you need to change (at least) 2 expressions: [en] to [fr] and <language>en</language> to <language>fr</language>

(Not sure whether there are other expressions in addition to those 2 to be edited)

Just a note - the base language change via updating the language column in lime_surveys doesn´t seem to work for limesurvey 3.5 anymore. It will break the survey.

The replacement of [{lang}] and <language>{lang}</language> works like a charm, though.

Hi All,

I have the same question for a live survey where i have 2 languages Greek (set as default) and English. I would like to switch them so the English will be the base language. My main goal is to show the Response filters in teh statistics in English as theya re currently shown in the main language.

Thank you in advance.

Cheers
Daniel

Hello,

I've got more or less the same problem: i need to change the base language to spanish of a survey which is in catalan. I've tryed two ways:

1. Creating a new survey, setting the language to spanish and then importing the groups of questions from the original survey to the new one. The problem here is that Lime indicates that this action can't be done because the base language of the two surveys must be the same (which it is a bit paradoxical, because i'm not translating the survey; this is something that perhaps could be fixed).

2. Doing as Ben_V says:

1) export the survey as .lss file
2) Make a copy in case of trouble !
3) open one of this file with a text editor
4) Replace all expressions related with current language with format <![CDATA[XX]]>

for example replace :
<![CDATAb]ca[/b]>
with your choosen language
<![CDATAb]es[/b]>



I have also changed the language codifications for the email templates and so on (<span lang="ES") . I have edited in LibreOffice, saved it as an lss (algo as a .txt) and then uploaded it to Lime again. I've got no problem with the importation, but when i try to open the survey i can't, and there appears a message saying '500 internal server error. Selecter Surveys language not found'. It's strange, because i've selected the code 'es' for the spanish language from another survey that i have created in spanish, i exported it in lss and checked if it was the right code.

Any clues? I attatch the original export in lss from the catalan survey and the modifyed one in spanish, if anyone could check.

Thank you very much!!

Hi,
here you get an *.lss with base language "Spanish".

I had to remove a lot of strange characters (which character set did you use in LibreOffice?).

So here you are:


Joffm

Hello Joffm, thank you very much for your help.

I use Libe Office oppening the files with the character set UTF8, the same i'm using when i work with the L.O. calc on .csv / .vv files (and i've never had problems before with UTF8...). I notticed the strange characters but i thought that when uploading the file again to the web it yould be solved.

I've checked your file and it works perfectly. Thank you VERY MUCH again for your help.

Cheers!

This didn't work for me and it looks to me as if the lss structure may have changed. I had naively assumed that I could save the translation of a survey as new survey, i.e. drop the base language and retain the 2nd language as the single base language of a new survey. At the moment I can't see any way to do this. That seems a really sad state of affairs but perhaps I'm missing something. TIA, Chris

This didn't work for me

What is "this"?

And which version of LimeSurvey?

Joffm

"this" = "drop the base language and retain the 2nd language as the single base language of a new survey". Sorry, that seemed clear to me. Sometimes what is clear to the person asking isn't. So ...
I have a number questionnaires ( www.coresystemtrust.org.uk ) and many translations of them. I have recently made up some LimeSurvey surveys for them starting with the English but then using the excellent "select additional languages" and the equally excellent "quick translate" and I laboriously copy and paste from my PDFs of the translations into the matching boxes and, hey presto, I now have a root survey that has, say, English and Greek and Spanish language versions. However, to use it in Greece the end user doesn't want to have the choice of English at all, that will just distract people. I had naively assumed I could make a copy of the survey, delete the languages I don't want and be left with the one I do want, in this case, Greek. That seems to be impossible. I can keep the structure by doing the copy and paste job described above and replacing "en" with "el" but then I have a survey that thinks it's in Greece but actually all the text is in English. I had to go with that and copy and paste all the Greek in again in place of the English. For me, with five questionnaires (of 10 to 34 items) and 25 translations, that's a truly huge overhead in hours, actually days, copying and pasting.

That's the long "this".

Version = Version 3.22.12+200406

Hi,
you can do that by editing the lss file. But try in a small sample survey.
Remove all <row>...</row> parts containing the unwanted language.
But in my opinion it is dangerous - you always miss something - and of course a lot of work.

However, to use it in Greece the end user doesn't want to have the choice of English at all, that will just distract people

Well, if it is a closed survey with tokens, set the language in the participants table.
If not, distribute the link in Greece with "&lang=gr" or in other countries "&lang=[language code]"

And remove the language changer from the survey.

Joffm

Totally agree about editing out all the lines: thought about it as an option for all of a millisecond! However, it looks as if you're telling me a better answer: leave the languages in but hide them. I see manual.limesurvey.org/Multilingual_survey#Hints_.26_tips and it, and another answer in the fora seem to say you edit the theme to get ride of the language changer/switcher.

Boy, sometimes LimeSurvey has the power but doesn't make it is easy find it or use it. Anyway, thanks, I will experiment and make sure I understand how to do that properly and safely.