Translation: the most under-used AI capability in Switzerland
Four national languages, and most SMEs still publish in one. This is the capability with the clearest business case in this country, and the least discussion.
A Swiss SME publishing in German only is invisible to a third of the domestic market. Everyone knows this. Almost nobody fixes it, because translation has always meant an agency, a budget line and a two-week turnaround for anything you wanted to say.
That constraint is gone, and it has been gone for about eighteen months without most companies noticing.
Where it works immediately
Everything that repeats. Your standard terms, delivery conditions, product descriptions, the FAQ on your website, safety instructions. Written once, translated once, reviewed once, then stable for years. The per-document cost is now trivial and the review is the only real work.
Incoming correspondence. An enquiry in Italian no longer waits for the one colleague who reads it. This is worth more than the outbound case in most firms, and nobody budgets for it because it was never a line item.
Internal material. Process descriptions, training documents, safety briefings for a workforce that does not all share a first language. This is where the largest Swiss SMEs have quietly saved the most.
Where it needs a human, without exception
Anything contractual. A machine translation of your terms is a different legal document in a way you cannot see. Have a lawyer read the French version before it binds anyone.
Anything where tone carries meaning. A payment reminder that reads as polite in German can read as curt in French. The words are right and the effect is wrong.
Technical vocabulary specific to your trade. Models translate general language well and industry terms unreliably. Build a short glossary of the thirty terms that matter in your field and supply it with every request. That single step does more for quality than changing model.
The practical starting point
Take the ten pages of your website that customers actually read and produce French and Italian versions this month. Have someone who speaks the language read them before publishing — not to translate, only to read.
It is a day of work for a reach increase you cannot buy any other way, and it is the AI project with the shortest path from cost to visible result that a Swiss company has available.