Analysing interviews and documents in multiple languages: how Skimle works across 100+ languages

Skimle analyses interviews and documents in many languages at once. You can import text and recordings in more than 100 languages and dialects, collect AI-conducted interviews in 29 languages with Skimle Ask, and get the analysis written in any of 29 languages. Quotes always stay in their original language, and right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are fully supported.

The question we hear in almost every demo is: does Skimle support multiple languages? It matters to anyone whose informants do not share one language. A Finnish study has interviews in Finnish, Swedish and English. An EU team receives consultation responses in French, Italian and German. An international customer discovery programme ends with Zoom and Teams recordings in half a dozen languages. This guide explains what Skimle does with each of them, at every stage from import to report.

The 30-second video below shows the three stages: import, collection and analysis.

Which languages does Skimle support?

Skimle supports languages at four stages, and the numbers differ because each stage depends on different technology:

In short: Skimle can read almost anything you give it, and it can talk to your participants and to you in 29 languages.

Full list of the 29 languages

The table lists every language Skimle can analyse in, run Skimle Ask interviews in and show its interface in. Each language is named in English and in itself.

Urdu interviews work with typed answers only, because Amazon Transcribe offers no Urdu model for live dictation.

Is your language missing? Russian, Czech, Swahili, Bengali or Zulu documents can all be imported and analysed today; only the output (categories, summaries and reports) has to be in one of the 29 languages above. If you need a new output or interface language, contact us: adding one is a deliberate, well-tested process, and customer requests decide which comes next.

Can I mix several languages in one project?

Yes, and that is the normal case. You can put interviews in Finnish, emails in Spanish and survey answers in English into the same project, and Skimle analyses them together.

This works because the large language models underneath Skimle work with meaning rather than words. If one participant talks about apples and another about Äpfel, they land in the same category without any dictionary or word-by-word translation. Skimle extracts insights from each document in its own language and builds categories across all of them, so a theme that runs through your German and Japanese interviews appears once, with evidence from both.

That also means you do not need to translate your material first. Translating a corpus before analysis costs time and money, and every translated quote is one step further from what the participant actually said.

Are quotes translated into the project language?

No. Skimle writes its own text (category names, insight summaries, reports and chat answers) in the project language, but it never translates or edits your source documents. Each insight carries a short summary in the project language and the original quote in the language it was spoken or written in.

In practice:

• In the categories and table views you read summaries in your project language, so you can navigate a corpus in languages you do not speak.
• Click any insight to open the document view, which shows the exact original passage in context.
• Exports to Word, PowerPoint and Excel keep quotes in the original language, so nothing is misattributed. You can then have the quotes you publish translated by a professional.

This fidelity to the source matters to our academic and professional users, who need to show reviewers and clients exactly what was said.

How do I choose the language of the analysis?

Every project has a project language, chosen next to the upload area when you add your first data source. It sets the language of everything Skimle writes for you. The project language is locked once documents have been added, so that categories and summaries stay consistent.

The project language can differ from both your documents and your interface. A Swedish researcher can work in a Swedish interface, analyse Arabic and English interviews, and have the report written in English for an international journal. Our first project walkthrough shows where the picker sits.

Can Skimle transcribe recordings in other languages?

Yes. Upload audio or video through the Audio or video data source, and Skimle transcribes it with speakers separated and the spoken language detected automatically. Transcription is built on Amazon Transcribe, which covers more than 110 languages and dialects, from Afrikaans and Basque to Vietnamese, Welsh and Zulu.

The transcript stays in the language that was spoken and is analysed like any other document. Read more in our guide to transcribing audio interviews with Skimle.

How do I run Skimle Ask interviews in several languages?

Skimle Ask runs AI-conducted interviews: you write an interview guide, share a link, and an AI interviewer asks your questions and follows up on the answers. Setting it up for several languages works like this:

1. Write the guide once, in any of the 29 languages.
2. Choose the languages to offer. Skimle suggests sensible defaults from your guide's language: a Finnish guide is offered in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and English, and a Japanese guide in Chinese, Korean and English. You can add or remove any of the 29.
3. Skimle translates the guide into each language you offer, questions and answer options included. You can review every translation in the guide editor before the survey goes out.
4. Respondents answer in their own language. The interviewer asks questions and follow-ups in the respondent's language, and the whole answer page, including buttons, consent text and help, appears in that language too.
5. Respondents can speak instead of type in 28 of the 29 languages, using live dictation.

All the answers then arrive in one project and are analysed together in your project language, with every quote kept in the language it was given in. One survey can therefore reach a whole multilingual workforce or customer base without separate projects per country. Read more about qualitative research at scale with Skimle Ask.

Does Skimle support right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew?

Yes. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu are written right to left, and Skimle supports them throughout.

• The interface mirrors. In a right-to-left interface the menu moves to the right, panels open from the other edge, arrows point the other way and keyboard navigation follows. This applies to the app and to the Skimle Ask answer page your respondents see.
• Every piece of text keeps its own direction. Skimle detects the direction of each quote and document from its script. An Arabic quote inside an English report reads right to left, and an English quote inside an Arabic interface stays left to right.
• Mixed content stays readable. Text Skimle writes for you follows the project language's direction, even when the interface is in another language.

The screenshot above shows a project analysed in English, viewed with an Arabic interface: the menus, buttons and layout are Arabic and mirrored, while the project's English categories and summaries keep their left-to-right reading order.

Which languages is the Skimle interface available in?

The whole app is available in the same 29 languages as the analysis. Choose yours under Language on the home screen or in your profile settings. Each user picks their own, so a team can share one project while each person works in their own language.

Arabic (العربية), Chinese Simplified (简体中文), Chinese Traditional (中文（台灣）), Danish (dansk), Dutch (Nederlands), English (English), Estonian (eesti), Finnish (suomi), French (français), German (Deutsch), Greek (Ελληνικά), Hebrew (עברית), Hindi (हिन्दी), Indonesian (Indonesia), Italian (italiano), Japanese (日本語), Korean (한국어), Lithuanian (lietuvių), Norwegian (norsk), Persian (فارسی), Polish (polski), Portuguese (português), Spanish (español), Swedish (svenska), Thai (ไทย), Turkish (Türkçe), Ukrainian (українська), Urdu (اردو), Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt)

Tips for multilingual qualitative projects

• Pick the project language for your readers, not your informants. Choose the language your report will be written in.
• Keep metadata on language. Adding the interview language as metadata lets you compare themes between language groups, which often reveals cultural rather than linguistic differences.
• Check key quotes with a native speaker before you publish them in translation. Skimle keeps the original exactly as it was, so the check is quick.
• Write interview guides in plain language. Short, concrete questions translate more reliably than idioms, whichever tool does the translating.
• Mind the dialects. When recordings mix dialects or switch language mid-sentence, read a few transcripts before analysing the whole set.

If you work in public sector and policy or run international academic research, these are the situations Skimle's language support was built for. Development organisations working across many countries may also find our guide to qualitative MEL data analysis useful.

Frequently asked questions

Can Skimle analyse interviews in Arabic?

Yes. Arabic documents and recordings can be imported and analysed, Arabic can be the project language for categories and reports, Skimle Ask interviews can be run in Arabic with spoken answers, and the interface is available in Arabic with a full right-to-left layout.

Can Skimle analyse Chinese, Japanese or Korean text?

Yes. Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean are all supported as analysis, interface and Skimle Ask languages, and recordings in all four can be transcribed.

Can I analyse Finnish and Swedish interviews in the same project?

Yes. Mixing languages in one project is the normal case, and both are full analysis, interface and Skimle Ask languages. Skimle groups what Finnish and Swedish speakers say into the same categories and shows each quote in its original language.

Does Skimle translate my documents?

No. Skimle never changes your source documents. It writes its own summaries, category names and reports in your project language and keeps every quote in its original language, so you always see what was actually said.

Can I analyse a language that is not on the list of 29?

Yes, as long as the output can be in one of the 29 languages. Documents and recordings in other languages, such as Russian, Czech or Swahili, are read and analysed just like the rest; only the summaries and reports are written in your chosen project language.

Ready to analyse interviews in several languages at once? Try Skimle for free and see AI-assisted multilingual analysis with every insight traced back to the original quote in its original language.

About the authors

Henri Schildt is a Professor of Strategy at Aalto University School of Business and co-founder of Skimle. He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles using qualitative methods, including work in Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, and Strategic Management Journal. His research focuses on organisational strategy, innovation, and qualitative methodology. Google Scholar profile

Olli Salo is a co-founder at Skimle and former Partner at McKinsey & Company where he spent 18 years helping clients understand the markets and themselves, develop winning strategies and improve their operating models. He has done over 1000 client interviews in numerous different languages and published over 10 articles on McKinsey.com and beyond. LinkedIn profile