Form Translations
Buildocs can translate every string in your forms into any of 39 supported languages with a single click. Once a language is initialized, all labels, placeholders, option text, table headers, and built-in UI messages are translated automatically via Google Translate. You can review and manually correct any translation at any time.
How it works
Translations are managed at the project level — one set of translations covers all forms in a project. When you initialize a language, Buildocs:
- Walks every form in the project and extracts all translatable strings (labels, placeholders, option values, table headers, etc.)
- Sends them to Google Translate in batches
- Stores each translation alongside the original English source text
When a form is rendered, the SDK automatically replaces strings with the translated version for the active locale.
Supported languages
| Language | Code | Language | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | af | Korean | ko-KR |
| Arabic | ar | Lithuanian | lt-LT |
| Bulgarian | bg-BG | Latvian | lv-LV |
| Czech | cs-CZ | Dutch | nl-NL |
| Danish | da-DK | Norwegian | no-NO |
| German | de-DE | Polish | pl-PL |
| Greek | el-GR | Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-BR |
| English (UK) | en-GB | Portuguese (Portugal) | pt-PT |
| English (US) | en-US | Romanian | ro-RO |
| Spanish | es-ES | Russian | ru-RU |
| Estonian | et-EE | Slovak | sk-SK |
| Finnish | fi-FI | Slovenian | sl-SI |
| French | fr-FR | Serbian | sr-RS |
| Hebrew | he-IL | Swedish | sv-SE |
| Croatian | hr-HR | Thai | th-TH |
| Hungarian | hu-HU | Turkish | tr-TR |
| Indonesian | id-ID | Ukrainian | uk-UA |
| Italian | it-IT | Vietnamese | vi-VN |
| Japanese | ja-JP | Chinese (Simplified) | zh-CN |
| — | — | Chinese (Traditional) | zh-TW |
Initializing a language
- Open your project and go to Translations
- Click Add Language
- Select a language from the dropdown (searchable)
- Click Initialize
Buildocs extracts all strings from your forms and auto-translates them immediately. The result shows how many strings were found and how many were translated automatically.
Each initialized language shows a summary card with:
- Total strings extracted
- Translated — strings with a translation
- Reviewed — translations manually approved
- Untranslated — strings not yet translated
- Orphaned — strings from fields that no longer exist in any form
Keeping translations up to date
When you add or edit fields in the Form Builder, new strings are not automatically picked up. Use the Sync action on a language card to scan all forms again — new strings are added and any strings that no longer exist in any form are marked as orphaned (but not deleted).
After syncing, use Auto-translate to fill any newly added untranslated strings via Google Translate.
Reviewing and editing translations
Click Manage entries on any language card to open the translation editor. You can:
- Search for any string
- Filter by orphaned, untranslated, or all
- Edit the translated text directly
- Mark a translation as Reviewed once you have verified it
- Manually add custom entries that should never be orphaned
Orphaned strings
A string becomes orphaned when the field it came from no longer exists in any form in the project. Orphaned strings are kept in the database and are never shown to users, but they can be re-activated automatically if a matching field is added back to a form during a sync.
Strings that were manually added are never marked as orphaned regardless of form changes.
Required permissions
Initializing, syncing, auto-translating, and editing translations requires the project_manager role. Viewing translation statistics is available to all project members.