Central Translation Service

Source: https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/university/organisation-and-institutions/university-administration/international-office/central-translation-service Parent: https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/university/organisation-and-institutions/university-administration/international-office

Please note!

The International Office will remain closed between December 24, 2025 and January 01, 2026 inclusive.

Central Translation Service

The Central Translation Service supports employees of the University of Bonn with German-English translation and proofreading needs, bridging the language gap and fostering the University’s international profile.

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Responsibilities

Besides translating internal and public content aimed at international students and researchers into English, we focus on establishing and applying consistent English terminology.

This way, we can make settling in for visitors and new members of the University easier, while also defining quality standards for communication in English.

To support researchers at the University, we closely cooperate an external provider of editing services for scientific texts in English.

FAQs1

German-English Glossary

Does the University of Bonn translate “Fakultät” with “faculty” or “department”? What do we use for “Graduiertenkolleg”, “Präsenzstudium” or even “Universität Bonn” in English?

Our English Glossary provides answers to these and similar questions. Based on American English, it is issued by the Rectorate and aims at making the production of English texts easier for everyone at the University while ensuring consistency in the use of frequent terminology. The glossary includes all official terminology of the University of Bonn and serves as a point of reference for print and online content.

Go to Glossary2

Our services

What do we offer?

Translation of web, administrative and other content from German into (US) English
Linguistic and factual review of translations from German into English
Coordination and assignment of projects to a selected pool of external language service providers
Proofreading of non-scientific English texts
Coordination of English editing services for researchers (esp. for third-party funding applications, journal articles) in cooperation with an external provider
Advising University employees on questions regarding the English language

What else do we do?

Quality assurance
Terminology management (German-English Glossary, termbases, translation memories)
Language policy (English Language Style Guide)

What don’t we do?

Translating scientific texts (dissertations, journal articles, etc.)
Translating software (localization)
Translating/ Proofreading in(to) other languages than English
Translating/ Proofreading for students

Downloads

Please refer to the English Language Style Guide of the University of Bonn for instructions on spelling, format, capitalization and abbreviations in English texts written for the University.

University of Bonn English Language Style Guide3