Translation of policy briefs

Client: Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne
Assignment: Translation French-German
Link: Policy briefs

Making research accessible to a broad audience

The Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration at the University of Lausanne publishes policy briefs twice a year. These approximately 10-page brochures provide an overview of the institute’s current research work by presenting and summarizing three selected studies from the previous six months.

The goal of these policy briefs is to make the institute’s academic research accessible to a broad audience. The interested public should learn what topics the researchers are working on and what insights they have gained from their work.

The policy briefs aim to highlight the diversity of research at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration on the one hand, and to provide answers to current questions in politics and administration on the other. The academic work should be summarized in a way that makes the texts understandable even for non-experts.

Translating from French into German so everyone can understand

As part of the University of Lausanne, the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration communicates primarily in French. The policy briefs are also typically written in French. To enable an audience in the German-speaking part of Switzerland to benefit from them as well, the texts must be translated into German.

Since spring 2025, I have been responsible for these translations. To ensure the texts remain accessible to everyone in German, I take care to construct sentences as simply as possible and use technical terms only where they are indispensable. However, I retain specifically Swiss terms and concepts, as the target audience in German-speaking Switzerland is familiar with them.

Through translation into German, the policy briefs become accessible not only to people in French-speaking Switzerland but also to those in German-speaking Switzerland. This allows them to stay informed about current Swiss research on politics and administration, and the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration increases its visibility across linguistic boundaries.

“Jonas Bühler quickly and accurately translated our French policy briefs into German, ensuring that even the most complex technical sections were clear and easy to read.”

Prof. Markus Hinterleitner
Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne