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Diese Information ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar.

WordPress can be used in many languages (see the list of available languages).

German Locales

There are a total of five different variants of German (so-called locales):

Short FormCountryForm
de_DE informalGermany«Du»
de_DE formalGermany«Sie»
de_CH informalSwitzerland«Du»
de_CH formalSwitzerland«Sie»
de_ATAustria«Du»

WordPress core translations, themes and the plugins are maintained on translate.wordpress.org by the community. Anyone is welcome to actively participate.

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Translations for de_CH

In comparison to Germany, where more than 2,600 people work on translations for de_DE, the translation team for de_CH is made up of fewer than 100 people. This means that we need to use our limited resources in a much more focused way.

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Differences between Germany and Switzerland

There are, luckily, only a few differences between the German language used in Germany and in Switzerland. The most important differences are:

  • We don’t use the sharp S (ß) in Switzerland.
  • Our quotation marks are different – in Switzerland, we use so-called “Guillemets” (or “angle quotes”).
  • A different currency is used in Switzerland – CHF instead of EUR – and the numeric thousands and decimal separators are different.
  • There are plenty of Helvetisms: words which are used exclusively in formal German in Switzerland. For example, Velo instead of Fahrrad (bicycle), parkieren instead of parken (to park), or Morgenessen instead of Frühstück (breakfast).

This allows us to carry over the translations from de_DE and to adjust them for de_CH. The majority of adjustments can be automated through the use of a translation script.

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Specific procedure

Important: we don’t translate directly from the original language into de_CH, but rather first into de_DE and then via import into de_CH.

Whoever would like to contribute an translation for Deutsch (Schweiz) can do so as follows:

  1. Create or complete the translation for de_DE informal. Please follow the guidelines in the Style Guide für Übersetzungen from the WordPress community in Germany.
  2. This translation will be transferred to de_DE formal, where the polite form of pronouns and verbs will be manually changed.
  3. Finally, the translations for both formal and informal locales in de_DE will be exported and modified using the PO Converter de_DE > de_CH, before being imported into de_CH. Once this process is complete, the Swiss variations can be more precisely modified as appropriate.

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Support for translators

Any questions can be posed in the #polyglots channels in Slack:

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