The topic of Easy Language has been firmly embedded in the faculty’s teaching for several semesters. Easy Language is a specially simplified form of German based on a fixed set of rules. Its purpose is to make information and texts accessible without barriers. Sebastian Müller, a graduate of the Master’s program Social Work – Inclusion and Exclusion at OTH Regensburg, heads the Easy Language Office Regensburg “sag’s einfach!” and regularly offers the course “Easy Language and Cultural Participation” as part of a teaching assignment. This course also gave rise to the joint project with the House of Bavarian History.
How can Bavarian history be told in a way that is accessible and understandable for everyone? This question was at the center of the collaborative project between OTH Regensburg, the Catholic Youth Welfare Service (KJF) Regensburg with its “sag’s einfach!” office, the House of Bavarian History, and the review groups of the KJF workshops. As part of the course, around 30 students translated texts from the House of Bavarian History into Easy Language. This allowed them not only to practice translation in a hands-on manner, but their texts were also put to immediate practical use—an example of close integration between theory and practice.
The texts in Easy Language are now available on the website of the House of Bavarian History for visitors with support needs, making it easier for them to access historical content.
The faculty is also placing a new emphasis on the translation of poetry. Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Christian Zürner, a research project on translating poetry into Easy Language was launched in the winter semester 2025/26. While translations have so far focused primarily on factual everyday texts, this project deliberately highlights a linguistic art form that expresses human experiences in a unique way. The aesthetic openness of poetry makes it challenging and difficult to access, yet particularly relevant for cultural participation. Nevertheless, very few attempts have been made to translate poetry into Easy Language, meaning that OTH Regensburg is pioneering an innovative field of research in cultural education.
Together with the review group of the KJF workshops in Straubing, Prof. Dr. Christian Zürner has already read, discussed, and translated poems by Eichendorff, Mörike, and Heine into Easy Language. The goal is to produce a small poetry volume as well as to generate new scholarly insights into the unique kind of poetry that Easy Language can unfold.
