Which languages should a Swiss website offer?

What the figures say

Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The Federal Statistical Office's figures from its 2023 Structural Survey show German as a main language of 61 percent of permanent residents, French 23 percent, Italian 8 percent and Romansh 0.5 percent; English is named by about 6 percent ¹. People can name up to three main languages, so the shares add up to more than 100. A news agency report on the same data gives matching shares ².

These are national figures. Your audience is not the national population; it is whoever buys from you, applies to you, or needs your information. A Geneva law firm, a Graubünden hotel and a Zurich software company will read the same statistics and reach different answers.

Start from tasks, not from languages

Write down the three or four things people come to your site to do: book an appointment, compare products, apply for a job, read a policy. Then ask, for each task, in which languages your readers can complete it comfortably. That question has better answers than "how many languages should we have?", because it ties each language to a reason.

Two patterns tend to fall out of the exercise:

• Some tasks need every language, some do not. A municipal service may need its forms in every official language of its area, while its news archive can stay in one. A shop may need product pages and checkout in German and French, with an English summary of delivery terms for buyers abroad.
• Being able to read a second language is not the same as choosing it. Someone in Lausanne may manage a German page, but a French page asks less of them at the moment you want them to act.

The case for each language

German

German is a main language of 61 percent of residents ¹, so a business serving the whole country without German leaves out its largest group. A version written for Swiss readers, with CHF prices, Swiss place names and wording your translator chooses for Switzerland, reads better than one borrowed from a site for Germany.

French

French covers the Romandie, and at 23 percent ¹ it is the second-largest group. Organisations based in Bern, Fribourg, Valais and Biel serve bilingual areas where French and German both matter locally, not only nationally.

Italian

Italian matters most if you serve Ticino or the Italian-speaking valleys of Graubünden, or work with public bodies that publish in all official languages. At 8 percent nationally ¹ it is a smaller audience, but in its region it is the language of daily life, and a German-only site there sends a clear signal.

Romansh

Romansh is a national language spoken as a main language by about 0.5 percent of residents ¹. A full Romansh version is a large commitment for a small audience, but there are clear cases for one: services in Romansh-speaking communities, cultural institutions and organisations in Graubünden that want to show respect for the language. A partial version, covering a welcome page and key contact information, is a reasonable middle way. Its ISO 639-1 code is rm ³.

English

English is not a national language, but about 6 percent of residents name it as a main language ¹, it can be the shared working language of an international team, and it serves readers abroad. For some organisations English is the shared second version that every reader can manage; for others it would be one more language to maintain with little return.

What you can maintain

Every language you add multiplies the work of keeping the site true. A price change, a new opening time or a corrected policy has to reach every version, and each version needs someone who can check it. An outdated French page with the wrong opening hours does more harm than an honest note that French content is limited.

Before adding a language, name the person who will own it: who writes or commissions updates, who reviews them, and how long changes may take to reach that version. If no one can be named, start with fewer languages or a reduced scope for the extra one.

Full, partial or summary versions

A language version does not have to mirror every page.

Partial versions need honesty in the interface. If the Italian version covers ten pages out of eighty, the switcher should not promise a full Italian site, and links from Italian pages into German-only sections should say so.

Machine translation as a shortcut

Machine translation can draft text quickly, but publishing it unreviewed at scale carries risk. Google's spam policies describe scaled content abuse, and they name automated transformations including translating as one of the techniques involved when many pages are generated with little value for readers ⁴. The safer use is as a first draft that a fluent person reviews before publication, with someone responsible for every published page.

Writing it down

Record the decision in a short table: languages, scope of each, owner of each, and the date you will revisit it. Our project planner produces a version of that table, along with the word volumes your translators will want to see.