APPROACHING PLAIN LANGUAGE IN A LEGAL TRANSLATION CLASSROOM

Abstract

Since plain language is a reality of today’s legal writing, though admittedly not as widespread
as it could be, it should also be addressed in legal translation courses going beyond a mere
mention of the plain language movement and its contrasting with legalese. Therefore, this paper
will discuss why and how legal translation trainees should be introduced to the principles of
plain language in a systematic way, especially with reference to English. The use of plain
language may involve two dilemmas for legal translation trainees. First, when asked to translate
an English legal document written in plain language, they may need to decide whether to keep
the style in the translation into a language in which plain legal documents may be less
widespread. Second, when translating into English trainees may face a dilemma whether to
apply the principles of plain language or seek inspiration from parallel documents which may
be written in legalese rather than plain language. The second dilemma is especially acute when
translating to English as a foreign language. It is believed that any dilemma is easier to tackle
when the person facing it is equipped with a systematic decision-making approach.
Accordingly, the paper will present a series of activities to raise trainees’ awareness of the
principles of plain language, the use of relevant resources, and the compliance with such
principles in legal drafting, including the grey zone of “false legalese”, as well as activities to
be able to make informed and reasoned decisions on transferring plain language features from
English into other languages, as well as on applying plain language principles when translating
legal documents into English. The exercises will be based on authentic materials and adaptable
to different language pairs involving English as well as different teaching contexts.