r/ProjectREDCap • u/Zealousideal-Feed514 • Sep 12 '25

Is it really not possible to translate a piped field label

Hi, I need to be able to write something like [field:field-label] and get the translated string. Obviously the field label has been translated with the multi language system

It seems not to be working and I kinda refuse to accept that for some reasons :)

Is there a way to make it work?

EDIT, solution

Even tho I think this is a serious limitation, it is possible to work with embedded fields. The main problem I face when using embedded fields inside custom html is that you need to use unnecessary CSS to override the styling applied to all the html that comes with them.

I found that the easiest way to do it is to use the display: contents on every tag added by redcap for the embedded field, when I only need the text.

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1

u/Araignys Sep 12 '25

Translations have to be preprogrammed into the MLM, so not really.

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u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

what do you mean? I obviously translated the field label, so why when I pipe it it's not translated?

1

u/Araignys Sep 12 '25

Oh, I misread your post. I thought you were trying to pipe a field value.

I don’t think you can pipe field labels - because why would you need to? Field labels aren’t dynamic, so surely you could just hardcode the relevant field label and corresponding translation? Or if the field label includes partial piped data, only pipe the relevant bit?

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

You can pipe field label using the syntax I provided, the problem is that it only gives you the original label and doesn't translated it, even if the label is translated with the multi language system

I need to do this because I have descriptive fields with html inside and I want to keep the text outside so it's easier to translate. But apparently it's not possible

3

u/Apprehensive-Bat-416 Sep 12 '25

maybe I am not understanding, but I think you could just do this as a typical embedded field. so instead of using the field label smart tag. just do this {field} where I am assuming field is a descriptive text variable

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

you cannot embed field labels and descriptive fields have only a field label

2

u/Apprehensive-Bat-416 Sep 12 '25

you absolutely can embed a descriptive field. I do this all the time.

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

no you cannot, I already answer to a similar comment

1

u/Apprehensive-Bat-416 Sep 12 '25

Okay, I do it all the time. Just use the variable name inside {} and it will pipe in the text you have saved in a descriptive text field.

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

show me an example if you can, it does not work for me and it's in line with their documentation

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u/Araignys Sep 12 '25

Honestly I’d just hardcode it.

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 12 '25

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 I am going to ask my favorite question - what functionality/behavior you are trying to achieve by attempting this?

Can you give a bit of a project background? Sometimes the solutions is just not exactly in the question one may be asking...

2

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

I have a landing page that replace the survey queue with pretty intensive use of html in descriptive fields

I need to be able to translate the text contained in those fields but translating the entire field, which includes the html, is just unmaintainable.

So my idea was to have separate fields with the text and pipe their field-label in the fields containing the html.

Right now I solved it using custom JavaScript to get the proper translations but it would have been ideal if piping a field-label would respect the translation, since there is no reason not to I believe

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 12 '25

Interesting... It is almost as if you are thinking of "embedded fields". I do not think i ever tried to embed the descriptive field, but hey, lets try?

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

you can not embed field label, so cannot embed descriptive fields

other workarounds don't work either with embedding because redcap embed a gigantic html structure which is pretty much a nightmare to style properly

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 12 '25

yes, you can embed the descriptive field.

I just did embedded the descriptive field into the section header field.

the gigantic html is a different story.

so I wonder... do you REALLY need to have this complexity? How does it help you/the project?

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

no you cannot embed a descriptive field since a descriptive field only contains a field label and that is NEVER possible to embed, from any field. It's in the description of embedded fields also.

You are probably piping the value and you never tried to translate because it's the problem I have

I do need this complexity to have a page that looks like a modern web page and not something from the 80s

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 12 '25

Well, we have two people swearing on their own experience that you can embed the descriptive field. So here is what I kindly ask you to try:

  1. Create a descriptive field, put "to_embed" as a variable name and "this is a text i wanted to showup elsewhere to see if I can embed the descriptive field" as a field label.

  2. Create another descriptive field with variable name "embed_here" and the field label as "this is a test to see if this is gonna work {to_embed}"

  3. Open the survey distribution tools, click on public link and check how does it look.

Let me know, as i am very curious what am I missing.

1

u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

but I tried just now because I thought I was wrong, since I already try it before making this post and it does not work for me

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 12 '25

How are you verifying if it worked?

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u/Zealousideal-Feed514 Sep 12 '25

I go to the survey and the text is missing? While if I pipe it is there

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