Checks in other languages

An example: Lidl in Germany

A team runs a check on Lidl, with Germany as the market. This is what changes when the check asks in German, step by step.

1. The form

Under Language the assistants are asked in, the form offers two choices for Lidl in Germany, side by side:

• German (Deutsch), chosen to start with: the assistants are asked in German, the way people in Germany ask, and answer in German. You still write the questions and read your results in English; their quotes stay in German.
• English: the assistants are asked in English about Lidl in Germany, and answer in English. Everything you read is in English.

Another language lists the rest. If you already check Lidl in Germany in English, the form starts on English instead, so your trend line carries on as before. You can always change it.

The market and the language are two separate choices. The market decides what the questions are about; the language decides how they are asked, and so whose answers you see:

• German shows what people in Germany, asking in German, are told about Lidl.
• English shows what someone asking in English about Lidl in Germany is told, for example a team in England, a visitor or an expat. The questions still name Germany.

Neither is more correct: they are two different audiences, and the assistants can tell them different things. Run both if both matter to you; each keeps its own trend line.

The form starts from your market's language: German for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, French for France, Belgium and Luxembourg, Spanish for Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, Portuguese for Portugal and Brazil, and so on. For English-speaking markets, worldwide checks and places it cannot match to a country it shows only the list, set to English.

The languages: English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Chinese is asked in Traditional characters for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, and in Simplified characters everywhere else. Serbia, Thailand and the Arabic-speaking countries are asked in English for now.

2. The questions

You still read and edit the questions in English, as on any check. Before the first assistant is asked, we translate each question once, the way a buyer in Germany would type it, and ask all twelve assistants in German. Google AI Mode is also asked with German as its language.

• Brand and product names stay exactly as you wrote them. In a language with its own alphabet, such as Japanese or Russian, a brand buyers there usually write in their own letters under an established name (ユニクロ for Uniqlo) may be written that way; a name is never made up.
• A question that does not name your brand never gains it in translation, so the questions that test whether the assistants recommend you on their own still do.
• The translations are kept with your questions, so every later check of Lidl in Germany asks the same German words, and a change in the results comes from the answers, not from new wording. A question you edit is translated again; the others keep their wording.

3. The result

• The summary, the findings, the advice and the claims of fact are written in English.
• Quotes stay in German, word for word, exactly as the assistants wrote them. So do the short phrases the assistants used about you.
• The check page says Asked in German at the top, and the grid and each assistant's answers show every question in English with the German wording under it.
• The PDF, the slides and the Markdown file show the same, and the API and the connector for ChatGPT and Claude return the language and each question as it was asked.

4. The trend line

German questions get a trend line of their own, separate from English. A German set for Lidl in Germany has its own trend, its own "what changed since your last check" and its own tracking schedule, beside any English set, so the two are never mixed in one line. A tracked brand keeps the language its questions were set up in, and daily tracking asks its morning questions in that language too.

5. The price

The same in every language. Translating your questions is included, and nothing is added to the price of the check.

What stays in English for now

• The Google search volumes shown under the questions appear on checks in English only.
• Page plans, page drafts and correction kits are written in English: write the page in your market's language when you publish it.
• The AI Visibility check that comes with a Full Picture is asked in English. To ask in another language, run the check on its own.