Bilingual website: French and German

Switzerland has four national languages, but each region mostly speaks one. According to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), German or Swiss German is a main language for 61% of the population and French for 23% (2023). In 2024, about one in six people aged 15 and over in French-speaking Switzerland regularly used German⁵. A website in one language therefore reaches many readers of the other language poorly.

Three cantons are officially bilingual: Bern, Fribourg and Valais⁶. Biel/Bienne, the largest bilingual city in Switzerland, wrote bilingualism into its city charter on 9 June 1996; French and German are official languages of equal standing there. According to its residents’ register, on 31 December 2025, 55.2% of the population was German-speaking and 44.8% French-speaking by registered official language⁷.

For a business, the question is mainly its customers. If they come from both language communities, one version per language speaks to each. English can be a third language: according to the FSO, 44% of the population uses it regularly (2024)⁵. Our Biel/Bienne guide describes the region in more detail.

15%of people aged 15 and over in German-speaking Switzerland regularly use French, according to the FSO (2024)⁵.

Google recommends a separate URL for each language version rather than one page whose language changes through cookies or browser settings: otherwise, Google might not find and crawl all the variations¹.

Let visitors choose. Google advises against automatically redirecting people to the language you assume they speak, and suggests adding links to the other language versions of each page¹. Biel/Bienne’s own rule for conversations works the same way: whoever starts the conversation chooses the language⁷.

Translate the page paths too: Swiss Tomato recommends giving each language its own clearly defined section and adapting the URLs to each language⁸. This guide therefore has three addresses: /en/guides/bilingual-website, /guides/site-internet-bilingue and /de/ratgeber/mehrsprachige-website.

Google’s guidelines compare four structures:

• A country-code domain (example.de): clear geotargeting, but only one country per domain, so it does not separate two languages spoken in the same country.
• Subdomains (de.example.ch): easy to host on different servers, but the address alone does not say whether “de” means the language or the country.
• Subdirectories (example.ch/de/): easy to set up and to maintain on a single host, but harder to separate into two sites.
• URL parameters (example.ch?lang=de): not recommended by Google.

hreflang annotations tell Google which language versions of a page exist, so that Search can point each person to the most appropriate one. They go in the page’s HTML, in HTTP headers or in the sitemap; Google treats the three methods as equivalent².

They do not set the page’s language: Google determines it from the visible content, not from hreflang, the lang attribute or the URL, and recommends a single language per page, navigation included, without side-by-side translations^1,2. This guide, for example, lists its English, French and German versions in the code of each one, with the French version as x-default. Four rules apply to the annotations:

• Each version lists itself and every other version. If two pages do not point to each other, Google ignores their annotations².
• The language code follows ISO 639-1 (fr, de), optionally followed by an ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 region code such as fr-CH. A country code alone is not enough².
• The x-default value marks the page for visitors whose browser language matches no version. It was designed for language selector pages².
• Addresses are fully qualified, protocol and domain included, not just a path such as /de/².

A translation carries the meaning; localisation also adapts the text to its readers’ conventions. In Switzerland, the difference shows quickly. Swiss Standard German has dropped the eszett: ss is always written instead, as in Strasse. The Federal Chancellery notes that ß is still used in other German-speaking countries, and that texts taken from the EU or from other German-speaking countries must be adapted to Swiss rules; a simple copy and paste is not enough³.

Each language also has its official terms. The name entered in the commercial register is called raison de commerce in French⁹ and Firma in German¹⁰; the enterprise identification number is the UID in English¹¹ and the IDE in French¹². TERMDAT, the Federal Chancellery’s terminology database, gives such equivalents for Swiss law and administration free of charge in German, French, Italian, Romansh and English¹³. Then keep one term for one thing: the Federal Chancellery recommends always phrasing the same thing the same way³.

Plan for proofreading and layout. Swiss Tomato recommends having every text translated and proofread by native speakers, because translation tools and AI make mistakes that only native speakers notice, and starting the design with the longest language⁸. EWM lists less visible content that needs translating too: form labels, confirmation and error messages, SEO titles and descriptions, image alternatives and downloadable documents⁴.

Translate the main content, not just the menu. Google only treats localised versions as duplicates if the main content remains untranslated², and notes that translating only the boilerplate, such as navigation, can create a bad user experience¹.

For e-commerce websites, the SECO SME Portal lists details the operator must show clearly: the full address with a contact person’s details, an email address, a telephone number and the UID, for example on a contact page. It also suggests a disclaimer, general terms and conditions and a data protection declaration¹¹.

The same portal points to the duty to inform people in advance about the collection of any personal data, and recommends a data protection declaration in an easily accessible place on the site, stating clearly which personal data are used and for what purpose¹⁴.

These pages set no language. On a bilingual website, publish the operator details, terms and data protection declaration in every language of the site anyway, linked like the other pages, so that each visitor reads what they accept in their own language. Update the versions together and, if a legal wording is in doubt, have a specialist check it.

A second language does not necessarily double the price. According to the agency EWM, templates and part of the development can be reused, but each language requires producing or adding the translation, configuring the version and checking it. In a fictional EWM example of a French and English website with twelve pages per language, the business itself spends 80 hours on the project, including preparing and proofreading the texts in both languages. EWM advises asking for a breakdown of this work, and stating whether every page will be translated at launch and who will keep the versions matched⁴.

A quote mostly depends on these items:

• The number of languages and translated pages, and whether everything must be translated at launch.
• Who writes, translates and proofreads each version: you, your team, a translator or the provider.
• Entering the texts in the content management system and checking each version.
• The less visible content: forms, messages, titles and descriptions for Google, image alternatives, downloadable documents.
• Upkeep: every change must be carried over into every language.

Our offer

Goodbye Internet is a creative agency in Frinvillier, near Biel/Bienne. This website, the enquiry form and our terms are available in French, German and English; enquiries are made in writing.

The Base package covers one landing page in one language. Entreprise, Entreprise + Logo and Premium take up to 3 languages, and translations do not count towards their unique pages: 5 for Entreprise and Entreprise + Logo, up to 15 for Premium. For E-commerce, pages and languages are confirmed in a quote. From Entreprise, you edit your information in the Sanity content editor; Entreprise and Entreprise + Logo include basic SEO, Premium in-depth SEO.

Our websites are built with Next.js, adapted for mobile and hosted on Vercel. Delivery in 2–4 weeks depending on scope. E-commerce timing is quoted individually. Unlimited revisions during the delivery window. After payment, your private brief collects your business, pages and content: state there the languages you want and who writes or translates each version.

You pay upfront or in 36 monthly installments, a binding purchase obligation rather than a rental. Management (domain, Vercel Pro, Sanity from Entreprise, Supabase Pro from Premium and one small information change per month) is billed separately from the start of website creation; it is required unless you manage and pay for the necessary subscriptions yourself. The amounts are on the service page.

This guide is written by Goodbye Internet, which also sells logos and websites. The facts and figures it cites come from the sources below; sections about our own offer are marked with a coloured dot.

1. Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites developers.google.com
2. Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page developers.google.com
3. Federal Chancellery, Leitfaden zur deutschen Rechtschreibung (2017, German) bk.admin.ch
4. EWM, Website costs in Switzerland, November 2025 ewm.swiss
5. Federal Statistical Office, Pratiques linguistiques en Suisse (2025, French) dam-api.bfs.admin.ch
6. State of Fribourg, Fribourg, le canton à la couture des langues (French) fr.ch
7. City of Biel/Bienne, Bilingualism (French page) biel-bienne.ch
8. Swiss Tomato, How to get multilingual websites right in Switzerland (February 2026) swisstomato.ch
9. Federal Office of Justice, Registre du commerce, Zefix et Regix (French) bj.admin.ch
10. Federal Office of Justice, Handelsregister, Zefix und Regix (German) bj.admin.ch
11. SECO SME Portal, Information about the owner kmu.admin.ch
12. SECO SME Portal, Informations sur l’exploitant (French) kmu.admin.ch
13. Federal Chancellery, TERMDAT, the Federal Administration’s terminology database bk.admin.ch
14. SECO SME Portal, Site commercial et protection des données (French) kmu.admin.ch