Know which language the survey was administered in

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1

Hi

I'm wondering if there is a way to know which language the survey was administered in when you download the data from ODK Collect, if we have several languages available.

The default language in which our survey is usually administered is Oromiffa but we also have the survey in Amharic; the dataset appears to have all the responses in English.

Thanks

2

Hi @jamitak! Currently, no. But I'd like to add this to the form audit log feature in the next month or two.

3

I had someone ask recently:

Q: In a multi-language form, is there are metadata/audit fields we can set that records the language the user has selected when submitting the form? I can't see it in XLSForm specs but not sure if there's a sneaky trick.

It looks like “language change” was considered as something to add to the form audit log, but not incorporated yet?

I was wondering if there was way, since jr:choice-name will pull the label for the active language, you could maybe have a hidden question with a single choice that is selected by default, with language names as the labels for the different languages for the one list option. Then use a calculate to pull the label for the active language (which will be the language name) and store that in the data for the submission? Note that I tried and couldn't create this.

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4

It hasn't been implemented yet and it's rather not possible to use any automated hidden question.
In audit file we should log every change because the language might be changed multiple times during filling a form.
The only solution for now is to for example add a question at the end of a form to ask what language was used during filling the form.

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