Focus on Text Producers: Plain and Easy Language in the Swiss Multilingual Institutional Context.

This paper is part of the MACSI project (Multilingual Accessible Communication in Swiss Institutions) and focuses on a case study carried out with the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The broad aim of this collaboration with the FSO is to evaluate how multilingual accessible communication on statistics can be produced. While most of the research on accessible communication is text- and recipient-based, in this study we focused on text producers. Like writers, who are specialized experts in different domains, translators are also presented with the challenge of interlinguistic transfer when it comes to both plain and specialized texts. This paper presents the results from a questionnaire on accessibility submitted to writers and translators within the FSO. The responses show that writers either address several target groups with the same text or produce a variety of texts for different target groups. Moreover, both writers and translators have little knowledge or experience with plain and easy language, even though most of them are interested in writing more lay-friendly texts. There is therefore a need to train and raise awareness among writers and translators so that they are able to adapt content, level of technicality and language to different levels of expertise when producing a variety of multilingual, accessible texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]