On October 13, 2010, former U.S. President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act, which orders federal agencies to write all their communications to the public in plain language. That’s why we commemorate International Plain Language Day on October 13. This article explores the main features of plain language, its use in Argentina, and its importance in the translation industry.
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Main features
Plain language is a writing style that is gaining ground worldwide, especially in government agencies, as it makes it easier for people to read and understand the text and helps them base their decision-making and actions on wording they can understand.
Plain language is not just about wording but also about presentation: visual language and design are considered key elements of plain language.
Plain language doesn’t mean—at least it shouldn’t mean—simplifying content or underestimating the reader. Quite the contrary, it focuses on the reader's effectiveness and understanding of the message.
Texts written in plain language are formulated in simple syntax, short sentences, and paragraphs, include everyday language and expressions, and avoid technical, Latin words and phrases, as well as excessive formal vocabulary and verbose.
Plain language in Argentina
Many international institutions, including networks in different Latin American countries, promote the use of plain language.
In Argentina, the Red Lenguaje Claro Argentina agency is “a community of public entities, networks and people that promote the use of plain language in government agencies to ensure transparency of government actions, and the people’s right to understand and have access to public information.”
The Argentinean Senate, the Legal and Technical Office of the Argentinean Presidency, and the Argentinean Department of Justice and Human Rights created the agency. It recommends using plain language in all communications addressed to citizens, trains professionals and government entities, learns from experience and gathers feedback, sets up standards and best practices, and assesses its impacts and improvements.
In March 2021, the School of Law at the University of Buenos Aires created the Plain Language Observatory in response to people’s lack of trust in the justice system, partly due to the difficulty in understanding legal language.
The Observatory’s primary goals include developing academic studies and research, as well as compiling, analyzing, and disseminating information about the complexities of understanding legal language and the contributions of plain language to the field of law. Its research areas include legal discourse, open justice, communication with children and adolescents, gender, technology, easy-to-read communications, public administration, and consumer relations.
Plain language and translation
In her paper “Plain language, translation, and language idiosyncrasies: contributions to reading comprehension,” Romina Marazzato Sparano* says that translation—the transfer of content written in a source language into a target language— “implies recreating content linguistically and adapting the formal and cultural characteristics of the text.”
In this sense, a translator’s responsibility to informative text is to “transfer source content with conceptual and linguistic fidelity to the target language.” With this in mind, translation professionals should be “well versed in plain writing and the idiosyncrasies of source and target languages to meet linguistic needs.”
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From this perspective, Sheila Gill, Project Manager at Rosario Traducciones, focuses on the definition of plain language by Plain Language Association International (PLAIN): “A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information.” She adds, “Our challenge as translators is to convey in one language the message expressed in another as clearly as possible, to avoid getting readers confused or frustrated,” emphasizing the audience’s role in this type of text. “In a way, when you use plain language, you’re empathizing with the reader, putting yourself in their shoes and becoming accountable for communicating a clear and transparent message. Society is asking for it; the benefits are evident,” she says.
Rosario Traducciones y Servicios recognizes the importance of localization professionals’ mastery of plain language. Therefore, we commit to ongoing research, discussion, training, and disseminating information, which puts the audience first and promotes reading comprehension and effective communication.
*Master of Arts in Translation, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). Member of the managing team and teacher of the Plain Language Academy (PLA)
