Some companies offer solutions. Others also sell big ideas. ewz, for example, is committed to providing “100% renewable energy for Zurich”. The company doesn’t just implement energy and communication solutions, such as constructing and operating the city’s fiber-optic network – it also works hard to demonstrate its values. Every word is chosen extremely carefully to make sure that their messages come across in exactly the right way.
It all started in July 2017, in a workshop with Supertext. Phrases such as “evidence instead of empty promises” and “the reason why” were scribbled on flipcharts. During the workshop, ewz and Supertext developed new guidelines for ewz’s corporate language. It was a collaboration that simply worked: half a year later, the Zurich copywriting and translation agency became ewz’s official partner for copywriting, translation and proofreading. Since then, the language specialists from Zurich West have handled around 100 orders in German, French, Italian, English and Romansh for ewz. The specially-developed terminology management system plays a central role in these orders.
Keeping the corporate language current
Our language is constantly changing. To keep up with the times, companies need to constantly and critically scrutinize their wording. The terminology management system developed by Supertext and ewz is a great example of this in action: all defined specialist terms and their translations are saved in a “termbase” by Supertext. Several times a year, ewz passes on any changes required via an order in the Supertext system and the termbase is updated. This means that ewz knows that the terminology is always up-to-date and mirrors the language currently being used by their employees and customers – and is correct across all their languages.
“We value Supertext as a capable and reliable partner for all our linguistic concerns.”
Jacqeline Verjee, Head of Communication Services at ewz
Jenny Herzog, the project manager responsible for the ewz account, is very pleased with how the collaboration is going:
“Translations for the energy sector are challenging as they are often strewn with complicated technical phrases or specialist terms, while at the same time being very diverse and creative, such as the translations for these microsites. Supertext gained experience from a similar project. Last year, we worked with CKW, another major energy provider in Switzerland, and completely rewrote their website and developed a corporate wording handbook. This experience was put to good use when working with ewz. Despite a lot of orders in a short period of time, we were able to always guarantee high quality.”
Cover image via ewz