For organisations
For organisations
Where dialect is not your problem but your people's.
Heidi has no customers today, no pilots and no case studies — and this page claims none. What is here is a description of your problem as well as we know it from outside. Tell us where we have it wrong.
Care and nursing homes
A resident with dementia loses her second languages first. What is left is the Zurich German of her childhood. The carer on the late shift arrived from Lisbon two years ago and learned Standard German — not that.
- What it costs
- This is not a comfort question. Somebody who is not understood is misread: pain becomes agitation, a request becomes resistance.
- What Heidi does
- Heidi translates and explains dialect — on a phone, in the corridor, in seconds. And it practises the sentences that are actually said on your ward.
What we would have to ask you
We do not know whether your staff may hold a phone at that moment. That decides everything about how this would work.
Hospitals and emergency care
At triage a patient answers the question about her pain — in dialect, because pain does not speak a second language. The junior doctor trained in Heidelberg.
- What it costs
- Misunderstanding a patient history is a documented clinical risk, not a service issue.
- What Heidi does
- Understanding first: what was said, immediately and re-readable. Not a substitute for professional interpreting — the case before that, which today is covered by nothing.
What we would have to ask you
Whether this is permissible in your setting at all, before it could be useful. That is your question, not ours.
Schools and kindergartens
Kindergarten in the canton of Zurich is conducted in dialect — the electorate decided that in 2011. At the parents' evening the parents discover they cannot follow their own child's school language.
- What it costs
- Parents who cannot follow the parents' evening look like parents who are not interested. That is the same misreading as in care, with different consequences.
- What Heidi does
- Dialect comprehension for parents — and for newly arrived teachers, who are in the same position and say so less often.
What we would have to ask you
Whether this should come from the school or from the municipality. We suspect the latter and have never checked.
In 2011 Zurich voters passed the initiative «YES to dialect in kindergarten» with about 54 per cent; since August 2012 dialect has been the kindergarten language of instruction. www.zh.ch
Language schools
Your student passes B2 and still understands nothing at the lunch table. She concludes it is her fault.
- What it costs
- It is not her fault and not your teaching — she learned the other language. But nobody told her that, and the disappointment lands with you.
- What Heidi does
- The dialect half no Standard German course covers, as a complement rather than a competitor. We do not teach Standard German and do not intend to.
What we would have to ask you
Whether you would rather resell this or recommend it. That changes the entire model.
Relocation firms
You hand over the keys, the insurance and the tax form. The first thing that breaks is the conversation with the caretaker.
- What it costs
- You have the client at the moment of highest attention — and that is exactly where your service catalogue ends and the real problem starts.
- What Heidi does
- Something you can hand over on day one that is still being used in week three.
What we would have to ask you
What you hand over instead today. If it works, this page is wrong.
Employers with international teams
The meeting runs in English. The moment it turns informal it switches to dialect — and informal is when things get decided.
- What it costs
- Somebody who cannot follow that part is present without taking part. That is a question of promotion and retention, not of wellbeing.
- What Heidi does
- Understanding without the room having to switch to Standard German — the very courtesy §2 describes as the trap.
What we would have to ask you
Whether HR buys this or a team does. We have never asked either.