Chapter Seven
158
Also in 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a directive to all
the state supreme courts that states will be held responsible for enabling all
litigants in U.S. courts to be provided with adequate translation services
for those who do not speak English and must cover costs when that
presents a problem (Perez 2010). Given the findings that plain language
translations into English result in significant savings in interpreter costs,
the letter is seen by many as a mandate also to provide at least English
plain language court forms.
In 2012, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on
Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants published standards for language
access in the courts (ABA SCLAID 2012). Plain language translations are
included as one of the standards.^7
Description of current state of plain language analysis
At least within the United States, the historical development of the Plain
Language Movement has fostered a belief in many of its practitioners that
the root cause of documents that are hard to read is simply bad writing.
Indeed, such documents are often referred to simply as “bad writing.” The
practitioners often lump documents created by specialists in with those
written by journalists, essayists, advertisers, or political writers. In other
words, they see no difference in the problem of those who write badly
when writing works intended for a general audience from those who write
badly while they are steeped in specialist terminology and logic patterns
and who may be writing only for specialists.
Thus, it has developed that many, perhaps most, plain language
practitioners come from literature and grammar studies, and a few others
come from technical writing training, i.e., people who write well. There
are a few linguists who also work in this field. Indeed, most such
practitioners often do have much to say to writers of badly written
specialist documents, as they are often susceptible to the same kinds of
errors that writers for general audiences are. These practitioners, who are
often not trained in the fields of the specialist language they are correcting,
typically make unwitting errors in meaning in making plain language
translations. So, in fields like law, it is now common practice to have the
plain language practitioners re-write documents such as court forms and
then to have specialists review these new forms to correct the mistakes in
meaning. Experience has shown though that the specialists doing the
(^7) For sources on current plain language legal translations see Kimble (2012).