Past newsletters 2004

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Plain English update 28 May 2004

Regular readers of this newsletter will not be surprised to hear the latest news from the European Commission. Neil Kinnock, the commissioner responsible for administration, has ordered writers to keep documents brief and to the point, to reduce the workload for translators.

According to spokesman Eric Mamer, "We want under normal circumstances our political documents to be 15 pages long, but obviously if a document has to be longer, it will have to be longer. This is a sort of target, not a legal constraint... but then again, everybody wants officials to be short and to the point, so it's an objective you cannot say no to."

At the moment, the average document is 32 pages long. The backlog of documents to translate is 60,000 pages and the EC estimates that without this crackdown, the backlog would rise to 300,000 pages within three years as the number of official languages rises from 11 to 20.

Sticking with the subject of translation, an agency has surveyed 1000 linguists to find the most difficult legal phrases to translate. The top ten were:

1) leapfrog appeal

2) toxic tort

3) sectioned under the Mental Health Act

4) chambers

5) probation officer

6) trustee

7) common law

8) barrister

9) Michaelmas Term

10) Court of Appeal

A reader in the United States was delighted to hear some words of expertise on a university radio station. As it is monsoon season in his area, our reader had assumed the heavy rain was to blame for flooding incidents. But according to the station's expert the cause was "repeated rain precipitation events".

MPs may need to brush up on their plain English skills. Following a report by the House of Commons procedure committee, the Government has agreed to try a scheme to allow more people to speak during a debate. This will involve lengthy debates having a half-hour or hour-long period during which speeches will be restricted to as little as three minutes. At an average speaking speed, this will only allow around 500 to 600 words (which is still enough to read the Gettysburg Address twice!)

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Plain English update 21 May 2004

From the letters page in today's Guardian:

Students who walked out of Headlands school in Swindon (Report, May 18) were advised by the council's head of education to "re-engage with their learning environment". It might have been more effective to tell them to go back to school. Alan Fowler, Winchester, Hants.

We wrote a few weeks ago about the problems that the expansion of the European Union (EU) had caused with the increase in official languages (which in turn increased the importance of clarity in the original language). Reports this week said some legislation may be delayed for up to six months while a translation backlog is cleared. And Maltese has been suspended as an official language for three years because of a lack of translators.

Language difficulties have also led to the collapse of plans to allow inventors to get a single patent valid across the EU. Some countries have called for the proposed system to use just English, while others have argued that English, German and French is the best compromise. And Spain says each patent should be written in all 19 official languages.

Promoters of a major Hollywood production have encountered linguistic problems in Japan. Japanese uses a "phonetic" language where words are made from a set of sounds rather than letters. When foreign words are used in Japanese, they are altered to the closest equivalent that can be produced from this set of sounds.

This means the film title "Troy" appears on posters above star Brad Pitt as "Toroi". Unfortunately, when read out loud, the word sound the same as the native Japanese word for slow and dim-witted.

Now and again we see a survey of particularly "obvious" warnings on packaging, usually blamed on over-protective legal departments. We believe these can be quite damaging as they can distract attention from the genuinely important information for a product. The plainly-titled group "Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch" recently announced its choices for the five most "wacky" warning labels of the year.

In fifth place was a smoke detector which warned: "Do not use the Silence Feature in emergency situations. It will not extinguish a fire."

Fourth was a five-inch fishing device with three steel hooks that cautioned users that it was "Harmful if swallowed."

Third was a 12-inch-high storage rack for compact discs which warned: "Do not use as a ladder."

Second place went to a sled label telling users to "Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions."

And the winner was a bottle of drain cleaner with the words "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product."

The following e-mail came to us this week. We have reproduced it with its original spelling and formatting. We can only assume it is an attempt to get round spam filters that search for particular (correctly spelt) words.

"ida revisable barbara demented purposeful abort relish afoul finessing de=ltoid stub pause

SensaStion!! We opeJned a NEW site with unbeOatable prices and prodAucts.

800 WORSLD BEST softMware with 90% disCcount - that is a really BEST offVe=r

just imagine, you can buy ALL softZware that you ever need and pay price o=f just one of it!

OfficeQ 2003 for 50$ - nice deal right ? ;) retNail price is 700$ - great =saviTngs, huh?

"Please spend few momentsF of yours preciousF time to check our offerU - it=is more than Rworth it!"

We decided not to take up the offer. But we must admit another unsolicited sales e-mail made us smile at its clear and honest approach: the subject line simply read "We can sell you illegal copies of software at cheap prices".

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Plain English update 14 May 2004

The latest step of the movement to clearer language in the court system has taken effect. The Administrative Court (which, among other cases, deals with judicial reviews) will now use English equivalents for Latin terms. For example, an "order of mandamus" will now be known as a "mandatory order" and an "order of certiorari" becomes a "quashing order". A consultation by the Department of Constitutional Affairs found 85% of people replying (almost all of whom were legal professionals) supported the changes.

Last week we reported on a new book of British slang. Among the definitions was "tyre-kicker", supposedly a car dealers' term for a gullible customer who feigned knowledge by kicking the tyres of a car to check its quality.

We've had several reports from readers in Australia, the United States and Canada that the term is long-established in those countries, as far back as the 1950s. (A reader in Northern Ireland had also heard it more recently.) However, they all understood the term to mean a customer who looks around but has no intention of buying. We presume this is a far less attractive prospect for dealers!

Speaking of the book, it seems we were too quick to question the credibility of some rhyming slang. A couple of readers (both from the south-east of England) have heard "a Nelson Mandela" used to order a pint of Stella Artois lager, with "a half-Nelson" for a half-pint.

And finally from last week's update, we repeated a previous mistake about laws requiring plain English in consumer contracts. The law applies in the state of Victoria (and not Queensland as we stated).

Now and again we see a book promising to explain a particular subject "in plain English". So we thought we'd search through an on-line bookstore and see what was on the market. And there's certainly an eclectic range.

• Roberts Rules in Plain English (which explains parliamentary procedures);
• Zen Meditation in Plain English
• Crocheting in Plain English
• Sweater Design in Plain English
• Vatican II in Plain English - The Constitutions
• Taigman's Advanced Cardiology (In Plain English)
• Plain English for Cops
• Chinese in Plain English
• Diving Physiology in Plain English
• The Common Sense No-Frills Plain-English Guide to Being a Successful Dad

If you've seen a similar book covering a particularly obscure or quirky subject, please let us know.

Plain English update 7 May 2004

The railway system has always had its own use of English. Passengers are told where to "alight", late trains "meet with delay" and, when the train breaks down, passengers have to "detrain the unit". So we probably shouldn't be surprised to hear that a new railway company's name has caused communication problems.

Four organisations in London and the East of the country merged to form the logically-named London Eastern Railways. Consultants then advised the new company to use the trendier brand name 'One'.

The problem comes with platform announcements. Passengers have been confronted with messages such as "The next train to depart platform 4 is the 7.20 One service."

The dictionary season continued this week with the launch of 'BritSlang' by Ray Buxley. Some of the entries are familiar, such as "sex up", meaning to exaggerate and Saga Lout, meaning an elderly troublemaker (the phrase plays on the older term "lager lout" and Saga, a holiday company for people aged 50 and over).

A piece of jargon we hadn't heard before, but quite like, is "tyre-kicker", a salesmen's phrase for the type of gullible customer who would feign expertise by kicking the tyres of a second-hand car to test its quality.

But some of the celebrity-based rhyming slang sounded extremely dubious. We'd love to know if any readers have ever heard phrases such as "Nelson Mandela" for "a pint of Stella" [Artois, a lager], "Colonel Gaddafi" for a café, or "Kat Slater" (a British soap-opera character) for "catch you later".

We've written before about the Unfair Contract Terms regulations that require British companies to use plain English in consumer contracts. And similar rules apply in other European Union countries, and the Australian state of Queensland. From this week, you can add Barbados to that list.

As with the British rules, the country's new Consumer Protection Act also bans certain types of unreasonable terms and limits the situations where firms can disclaim liability.

The Barbados Advocate reports that some of the contracts likely to be affected are those for mobile phones, health and fitness clubs, credit card agreements and banking documents. The Act "clearly states that all terms in consumer contracts must be in intelligible language and not contain onerous cross references".

We still have a few places left on our 'Plain English and forms design' course on Tuesday 22 June in London. The course covers plain English writing techniques in the morning and principles of typography and layout in the afternoon, including a practical exercise. For more details, or to check availability, please call Helen Mayo on 01663 744409.

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