More survey-based papers I review seem to be including copies of the survey instruments now (a Good Thing - I auto reject otherwise). But many are still not including them in the original lang, only an English translation. You need both! (& description of translation process)

This is true regardless of how 'obscure' the original language is. If anyone reads your paper, chances are they'll include people who know that language (because they're interested in that place), and they'll want to know what exactly you asked people.

Hopefully it will include people actually from that place!

In fact, the exact wording becomes more important the further the language is from English. Not including survey instruments in the original language divorces all of your results from their context, and it's part of an unhealthy tendency to privilege the results over the context

It's a bit like when documentaries or films don't subtitle people properly, they just write "[talks in native language]" argh, they don't even say which language! (Long Walk to Freedom does this, the only saving grace is at least they did it to the Afrikaner speakers as well)

So, if you're a journal editor, please include clear instructions to authors requiring: 1) full copies of survey instruments in the journal language + all languages used. 2) description of translation process 3) which authors (initials if anonymised) are fluent in which languages

4) which authors actually took part in field work (I'm very sceptical of papers where there are no authors who are both fluent in the survey languages AND took a significant part in field work).

Misc other stuff survey papers routinely omit: i) proper description of how the surveys were conducted, by whom, how were people approached, where, in what context, how many declined? ii) ethical considerations and IRB approval. iii) what piloting was done? what changed?

Final tweet (prob!) I want to see the full survey *as it actually looked* in the field/online. Not disembodied questions or choice experiment grids. What were you actually holding in your hands? What did you actually say when you approached someone? What did they actually see?