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https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01485-x OPEN

Syntactic complexity in legal translated texts and

the use of plain English: a corpus-based study
Xiaowen Lin1, Muhammad Afzaal 2✉ & Hessah Saleh Aldayel3

This study compared the linguistic difficulty of legal translated texts with the syntactic
complexity of native English legal writings in order to demonstrate the statistically significant
1234567890():,;

differences between the two big datasets. The study applies features of the syntactic com-
plexity of sentences within legal text translations that translated texts are less complicated
than their original counterparts. It provides an example of how easy plain English translation
in legal communication might result in understandable target writings. The findings of the
legal translation of the people of three regions reveal striking patterns in terms of syntactic
complexity and legal communication in plain English, which are consistent with previous
research. Complex nominal and hypotactic structures result in a high number of propositions
per sentence, placing a high demand on the cognitive processing abilities of those who read
and understand the text. The statistics show considerable differences among the three
locations and various forms of company law corpora. The study is the first large-scale
quantitative analysis of the accessibility of legal jargon compared to other forms of English,
emphasizing the efficacy of plain-language initiatives in legal translations.

1 Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China. 2 Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International Studies

University, Shanghai, China. 3 King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ✉email: muhammad.afzaal1185@gmail.com

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I
Introduction
n applied linguistics research, syntactic complexity has been
used extensively as a measure to capture the complexities of
academic writing and texts produced by L2 English writers.
Syntactic complexity focuses on the length of the unit of pro-
duction, the extent of clausal embedding, types of structures, and
the nuanced nature of the structures within the production units
(Lu, 2011, p. 36). In his paper on Arabic-English bi-directional
translation, Al-Jabr (2006, p. 206) directs our attention to three
key features that are argued to make up syntactic complexity in
the translation domain. These include the linguistic features of a
given language (e.g., preference for coordination/subordination),
the genre of the text (e.g., legal/journalistic writing) and the
lexical or grammatical preferences of the translators.
Legal translation is known as the subgenre of TS. Likewise, the
complexity of the language of law warrants further investigation
as legal texts have increasingly begun to find their way into the
social arena. For instance, in recent years, legal translated texts
have started to be published, circulated and read at international
organizations, in public services and in the private sector (Biel
et al., 2019). Legal translation, which is the subject of this paper,
implies the “language of the law of England, America” (Tiersma,
2008, p. 7; Giczela-Pastwa, 2019; Afzaal, 2022), of other countries
in which English is an official language and of countries that
interact internationally within the arenas of business, interna-
tional affairs and trade.
The present study sought empirically informed insights into
the legal translation of company laws while comparing
Chinese-translated corpora with existing British corpus and
Hong Kong Company translated laws in syntactic complexity.
The focus was on the legal translation and plain structure used
by non-native English translators of legal terms in Hong Kong
and China. With the research gap and widespread usage of LT
in mind, the study’s goal was to identify the elements that
impact legal translation, compare legal translated texts with
non-translated materials and determine how far legal corre-
spondence translation has made communication effective.
Ramos and Cerutti (2022) suggest that “due to the expansive
nature of the legal system and its various subfields and
crossing conceptual networks, which address almost every
facet of human existence, legal writings cover a wide range of
topics conceptually”, (p. 22).
More broadly, this paper examines the syntactic structure of
languages used in legal translated texts and investigates whether
translated texts and translation norms through the application of
the analytic lens of Kachru’s (1985) Three Circles Model of World
Englishes and norm orientation) interact and experience a
transformation. Kachru’s Three Circles model provides a theo-
retical underpinning to categorize the regions based on the
English Language spoken in these countries. For instance, the
inner circle offers insights from the region of English native
speakers such as people of the United Kingdom or the USA. The
outer circle focuses on the circle includes countries under the
direct control of the UK as colonies where English is the official
language. Lastly, the expanding circle focuses on the foreign
language as norm-dependent and mainly depends on the inner
circle.
Therefore, the study undertakes plain language because
plain English is an initiative that emphasizes the accessibility
of communication. Even a person who is not trained in law
should understand what is being said in a contract, not just the
legal professionals who are drafting it. The study also high-
lights the difficulty of archaic legal jargon and complex syntax
of legal texts and advocates using plain language, using words
that everyone can comprehend (Mattila, 2016; Adler, 2012,
Yu, 2021).
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Studies of syntactic complexity in translation
A large body of literature on syntactic complexity studies has
investigated the academic writing of L2 and L1 learners in terms
of syntactic complexity. Still, fewer studies have provided insights
into the use of syntactic complexity in translated texts produced
by non-native English speakers. As part of his research, Lu et al.
(2020) looked at the indicators of syntactic complexity in three
components that were employed in this study for instance, the
Biber Tagger proposed by Biber et al., (1999), the Coh-Metrix
proposed by McNamara et al., (2014), and the L2 Syntactic
Complexity Analyzer initiated by (Lu, 2010). In addition, Lu
(2010) created the L2SCA, which uses 14 metrics to computerize
syntactic complexity analysis of L2 English texts in the target
language. Pallotti (2015) considers complexity as polysemous in
second language acquisition, and Bulté and Housen, 2012) define
complexity as cognitive or linguistic. Lu (2017) defined com-
plexity in syntactic structures ‘as the diversity and level of
sophistication of syntactic structures used in textual creation’, (p.
5, 2017).
Scholars in the field of legal translation have demonstrated a
particular interest in the processes of multilingual legislative
drafting that are utilized in various organizations on both the
national and international levels (Dillion, 2022). According to
Mancilla et al. (2015), non-native speakers employ more coor-
dinating and complicated phrases but far less subordinated, than
native speakers, even though expert non-native speakers writing
approaches native speaker writing in terms of the quantity of
compliance. Ansarifar et al. (2018) touched on the phrasal
complexity within the abstract sections of theses produced by L1
learners. They (2018) further identified that “the phrasal com-
plexity, measured using four phrasal modification indices, are the
lowest in master’s theses and highest in published RAs, and
concluded that academic writing becomes more complex with
writer expertize (p. 12)”. In addition, another study by Song and
Wang (2019) compared abstracts written in English of doctoral
theses by L1 Chinese and L1 English students. The results of their
study reported less use of subordination than L1 English students.
According to Wu et al. (2020), “ELF writers utilize sentences
and clauses that are longer than those used by L1 English writers,
(p. 12)”. On the other hand, a recent study by the authors of Yin
et al. (2021) investigated differences in engagement with syntactic
complexity between emerging and experienced international
publication authors in seven research article (RA) part-genres and
presented practical implications of syntactic complexity in second
language writing programs. At the same time, this study is dis-
tinct in that it examines the length of legal texts at the word and
sentence level to determine the complexity of legal writings. Liu
and Afzaal (2021) investigated the simplification hypotheses in
corpus-based translation studies that should be approached from
the perspective of syntactic complexity. Two comparable corpora
are used in this study: the English monolingual part of COCE
(Corpus of Chinese English) and the native English corpus of
FLOB (French Language and Literature Corpus) (Freiburg-LOB
Corpus of British English).
Syntactic complexity and legal translation
Although the foci of the legal translation have not only pro-
liferated in the last decade but also increasingly widened their
focus due to diverse implications, the legal system comprises its
own system, terminologies, axiology, and boundaries to shape
their concepts (Łucja Biel, 2017). In this sense, it is necessary to
investigate the legal translation of company laws in non-native
English-speaking countries. Besides, Maaß & Rink (2021) propose
that legal communication requires some linguistic and specific
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jargon knowledge to understand the legal terms. As legal com-
munication is technical, it has several characteristic features
useful for communication between experts. Also, when familiar
persons are addressed in specific legal terms, such syntactic forms
constitute accessibility barriers (Rink, 2020, 117). Perhaps, the
language complexity reveals the ability to use a wide and varied
range of sophisticated structures and vocabulary. Therefore,
language plays a significant role in legal correspondence; however,
on the other hand, translation is inextricably connected to lan-
guage and translation.
The languages contribute significantly to law correspondence,
from legislation to legal documents and translation to inter-
pretation of legal language, rules, and correspondence. A com-
parative approach to legal studies is undoubtedly not a new
marvel. Biel et al. (2019) consider ‘legal translation and inter-
pretation an interdisciplinary area of linguistic practice’, (p .7,
2019). Moreover, in corpus linguistics, the phenomenon of legal
translation has already been expanded for the last four years. The
research in legal translation has achieved a significant pace in
recent years.
Although some prior studies have discussed the simplification
of legal translation (Biel et al., 2019; Biel, 2016; Bolton, 2009),
there is a dire need to examine the complexity of translated texts,
legal documents, and correspondence. Furthermore, as the legal
discourse is always at par with the approach of an ordinary
person, translation makes it easier for the public. In this sense, it
is necessary to examine the syntactic complexity of legal trans-
lation to unveil the linguistic structure to maximize competency
in legal translation works.
Legal translation refers to translating legal documents and
companies’ laws to make the text understandable and clear.
Previously, Biel’s studies (2014: pp. 36–48) examined the phra-
seological continuum in the language of the law, which accounts
for non-terminological categories that are statistically significant
in the genre of legislation. Furthermore, she (2018) says that a few
types of research have been reported while incorporating corpus-
based methodology in the field of legal translation (Biel, 2018, p.
34). With the advent of corpus-based studies, applying corpora in
legal translation brings fruitful results (e.g., Biel, 2015, 2018;
Pontrandolfo, 2011; Trklja, 2017). In translation workflow,
numerous small-scale corpus-based studies of legal translations
have been conducted in Chinese-English legal translation (e.g., Li
and Wang 2013), which have not been compared to other Eur-
opean languages.
The legal translation helps readers understand the complexity
and ambiguous nature of legal discourse practised in courtrooms.
English is taken as an official and second Language in Hong
Kong, whereas English is taken as a Foreign Language in China.
Consequently, these investigations are worthwhile to pursue
because they will aid in discovering translation conventions that
function both in the networks of translation and in the cognitive
act of translations (cf. Toury, 1995; Xiao and Hu, 2015; Eagleson,
2014). Laviosa’s (2002) study, based on the analytical framework
of linguistic variety, sentence length and information capacity to
measure simplification, recorded that translated versions of texts
have restricted lexical variety, and the ratio between content and
function words remains low.
The study is significant for two reasons: many studies con-
ducted in the Chinese-English translation background followed
qualitative approaches in translation despite some recent research
using corpus-based quantitative techniques. This paper analyzes
the syntactic complexity of legal translation corpora. Therefore,
this study identifies the existing gap in Chinese-English legal
translation research in several areas. Thus, the study fills the gap
as no parallel contrastive study has been conducted in the legal
discourse regarding syntactic complexity.
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Finally, the current study adopts a corpus-based contrastive
analysis of legal translation to analyze the syntactic complexity in
two translated texts. We take syntactic complexity as a theoretical
framework to determine how translated texts and their norms
have affected the production of legal texts in plain English in
Hong Kong and native English-speaking countries.
The present study
The present study contributes to the body of scholarship that
analyzes the syntactic features of translated law texts. More spe-
cifically, this study seeks to empirically inform insights into the
legal translation of company laws while comparing Chinese-
translated corpora with existing British corpus and Hong Kong
Company translated laws in terms of syntactic complexity. The
study is of worth because legal language is not static but dynamic,
and legal translation shares characteristics with other translation
activities such as “a norm-governed human and social behavior, a
text-producing act of legal communication” (Cao, 2013, p. 422;
Chesterman, 1993, 2000; Dullion, 2022).
This paper mainly focuses on the legal translation and plain
structure of non-native English translators of legal terms in Hong
Kong and China. As the previous studies based on syntactic
complexity covered how ELF writers engage syntactic complexity
differently, this study will fill the existing gap, how non-native
English speakers engage syntactic complexity in their translations.
As a result, the current study contributes significantly to the body
of knowledge on legal translated corpora writing syntactic com-
plexity by addressing these research gaps.
Research questions. The following questions were addressed in
this study:
RQ1) How do the translated and non-translated legal text, as
reflected in the Hong Kong Government’s websites, differ from
across the two regions of China, Hong Kong and the UK,
regarding syntactic complexity?
RQ2) If the differences or similarities are significant, can they
be used in conventions of plain English movement?
Methods
The Corpus. The corpus of the study comprises the translated
texts of UK company law (the inner circle) and legal translated
texts of the Mainland and the Hong Kong (the outer circle) as per
the domain of plain English movements. The data of the UK is
monolingual, whereas sub-corpora is bilingual aligned at the
sentence level. The Hong Kong corpus includes the legal texts of
companies’ ordinance executed in 1932 and modification of this
law in 1984, 2012 and 2014, respectively. At the same time, the
corpus of Mainland China includes the legal texts of company law
for the years 1993, 1999, 2004, and 2006.
In addition, the study employed Kachru’s model to set up the
corpus in our research. Braj Kachru’s (1985) idea of three circles (the
inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle) presents the
notion of English language variations across various cultures. In a
similar domain, these circle offers to measure English Language’s
spread, acquisition, and functional patterns in socio-cultural settings
(Kachru 1985, 12). Kachru (1985) proposes that the inner circle
works for the countries where English is taken as the mother tongue,
and the outer circle represent countries and regions where the
English Language is taken as a second Language (L2). The following
figure describes the modification of laws in different stages in parallel-
comparable company law corpus (Fig. 1).
Syntactic complexity analysis. The study employed an L2 Syntactic
Complexity Analyzer (SCA) (Lu, 2010) to analyze the corpus. Table 1
accounts for fourteen syntactic complexity features, including five
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Fig. 1 Kachru’s plain English circles and the corpus.

Table 1 Lu’s (2010) features of syntactic complexity.

Measure Code Definition

Type 1: Length of production unit Mean length of clause MLC # of words/# of clauses
Mean length of sentence MLS # of words/# of sentences
Mean length of T-unit MLT # of words/# of T-units
Type 2: Sentence complexity ratio C/S # of clauses/# of sentences
Type 3: Subordination T-unit complexity ratio C/T # of clauses/# of T-units
Complex T-unit ratio CT/T # of complex T-units/# of T-units
Dependent clause ratio DC/C # of dependent clauses/# of clauses
Dependent clauses per T-unit DC/T # of dependent clauses/# of T-units
Type 4: Coordination Coordinate phrases per clause CP/C # of coordinate phrases/# of clauses
Coordinate phrases per T-unit CP/T # of coordinate phrases/# of T-units
Sentence coordination ratio T/S # of T-units/# of sentences
Type 5: Particular structures Complex nominals per clause CN/C # of complex nominals/# of clauses
Complex nominals per T-unit CN/T # of complex nominals/# of T-units
Verb phrases per T-unit VP/T # of verb phrases/# of T-units

Table 2 Comparison of HK syntactic complexity in HK legal translations.

MLS MLT MLC C_S VP_T C_T

p-value 0.13104 0.00026 0.00038 0.41222 0.00008 0.05238
Value of U 1982 1464.5 1486 2147.5 1400 1877
Z-score −1.50599 −3.65001 −3.56094 0.82032 −3.91724 −1.94101
Mean of ranks Cap622 70.93 65.86 66.07 76.45 65.23 69.9
Cap32 82.41 93.66 93.2 70.18 95.07 84.7
Sum of ranks Cap622 7235 6717.5 6739 7797.5 6653 7130
Cap32 3791 4308.5 4287 3228.5 4373 3896

dimensions. Lu (2010) categorizes the syntactic complexity analyzer
as advanced writers of English. It was validated with the produced
English corpus of Chinese learners, which consisted of 3554 essays
written by English majors studying at universities in China. Two
different coders each annotated ten different articles to test the
analyzer’s reliability. SCA classifies syntactic measures into five kinds,
e.g., three metrics are related to the analysis of length of production at
the clause level, sentential, or T-unit level: mean size of clause (MLC),
mean length of sentence (MLS), and mean length of T-unit (MLT);
sentence complexity ratio; the amount of subordination, the amount
of coordination, and the relationship between particular syntactic
structures and larger production units, i.e., complex nominals per
clause (CN/C), complex nominals per T-unit (CN/T), and verb
phrases per T-unit (VP/T).
Results
This section provides empirical data and discusses the questions
formulated in section 1. The average difference can be used as an
indicator of difference to understand the simplification level of
the translation. So, the average mark is the value of p should be
less than 0.005 (p < 0.005) in the features of syntactic complexity.
The results show a statistically significant difference in the
fourteen elements of syntactic complexity of the Hong Kong
company law dataset. As can be seen, the value of p of two
components such as MLS and CT_T are not significant. However,
other features are substantial. For example, the new dataset
Cap622, such as MLS, MLT, MLC, CS, VP_T, C_T, C_T, DC_C,
DC_T, CT_T, CN, CN_C are simplified than the old version
dataset, which shows the importance of translation of legal dis-
courses in plain English. The study results show that the newest
edition of the UK corpus (UK 2006) contains 270,597 words,
whilst the Hong Kong version contains 210,902 words, making it
the largest in the world.
The new version of UK company law shows a significant dif-
ference in syntactic complexity. Table 2 shows that the results
comprised two phases, the version of UK1985 and UK2006. The

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Fig. 2 Comparison of syntactic complexity features across Mainland and UK.
Fig. 3 HK company law and syntactic complexity features.
old version is more complex than the new version presented in
2006. Out of fourteen features of syntactic complexity, only two
features such as MLC, i.e., 119.73 and CN_C, which is 119.01,
show no difference. The other twelve features in the written forms
of company laws are found to be significantly different from each
other. For example, MLS, MLT, CS, VPT, CT, DC_C, DC_T, TS,
CT_T, CP_T, CP_C, and CN_T are more straightforward than
the old version of company law. The value of p is found to be
more significant in two cases MLC (p = 0.961 > than p = 0.005)
and CN_C (0.9, which is more significant than 0.005).
Figure 2 shows the overall comparison of Z-score in the HK,
Mainland and UK company laws corpora. The figure shows that
the Hong Kong company law results reveal that comparing the
old and new versions HK corpus, the two key features, such as
MLC, C_S, C_T and CT_T, are found to be simpler than the
version of the new one (Cap32). On the contrary, the feature T_S
remains different, and Cap 32 is significantly different from the
old version of company law, 50.38.
Unlike the other two datasets, the mainland dataset is quite the
opposite of all syntactic features. Results show that the old version
of company law shows MLC, CP_T, and CP_C are only simpler
versions. However, the remaining features, such as MLS, MLT,
CS, VP_T, C_T, DC_C, and T_S, are complex syntactic features.
Whereas the new version mainland has variations, e.g., MLS,
MLT, CS, VP_T, C_T, DC_C, and T_S are more straightforward
than the other features such as MLC, CP_T, and CP_C. The
comparison is shown in Fig. 3.
Table 3 shows differences across three regions and different
forms of company law corpora as the statistics show a significant
difference in Hong Kong company law between the old and new
versions. Whiteman (2000) highlights how the scientific
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ARTICLE
community is increasingly emphasizing plain English commu-
nication with the non-scientific public and amongst scientists
from other fields to improve the understanding of scientific dis-
coveries by the general public, (MacCormick, 1998).
Discussion
As was just mentioned, the primary objectives of this investiga-
tion were as follows: Investigating both translated and untrans-
lated versions of legal texts was the initial goal of this project. The
second step is to determine what, in terms of accessibility, has
changed since the beginning of the movement toward using plain
language. Many studies suggest that legal language deviates quite
heavily from plain English and has been and will continue to be
more challenging to understand than standard English. This is in
line with common intuition and plain-language advocates, as well
as recent findings regarding private legal documents (Martinez
et al., 2022; Martinez et al., 2022; Jiang et al., 2019; Yan, 2013),
which suggest that the language of private legal documents is
difficult to understand, (Martinez et al., 2022, p. 13; Lastres-
López, 2019).
Overall, striking patterns emerge from the findings of the legal
translation of the people of three regions in terms of syntactic
complexity and legal communication in plain English. First, it has
been noticed that ambiguous nominal and hypotactic structures
contribute to a high number of propositions in each phrase,
which requires a high level of cognitive processing from the text
readers. Rink (2020) argues that ‘when people are addressed in
this manner, the use of syntactic forms such as these is a barrier
to their accessibility, (p. 117). The syntactic degree of hypotaxis
and complicated phrase structures in all source texts is quite
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Table 3 Syntactic complexity in HK legal translations in mainland.

MLS MLT MLC C_S VP_T C_T DC_C

p-value 0.00001 0.00001 0.96012 0.00001 0.00001 0.00001 0.00001
Value of U 1677.5 2981 6990.5 2163 2830.5 2620.5 2925.5
Z-score −10.1021 −7.6371 0.05484 −9.18399 −7.9217 −8.31883 −7.74205
Mean of ranks UK1985 168.97 156.9 119.23 164.47 158.29 160.24 157.41
UK2006 78.4 88.43 119.73 82.14 87.27 85.66 88
Sum of ranks UK1985 18,248.5 16,945 12,876.5 17,763 17,095.5 17,305.5 17,000.5
UK2006 10192.5 11,496 15,564.5 10,678 11,345.5 11,135.5 11,440.5

Fig. 4 Syntactic complexity in HK legal translations.

difficult. As a result, there is an extremely high level of infor-
mation density, making it difficult for text users to process and
exceed the processing capabilities of those with communication
impairments (see Hansen-Schirra et al., 2020b; Gutermuth, 2020;
Norris and Ortega, 2009; Ortega, 2003).
The study highlights the differences in the company law of the
three regions regarding the syntactic complexity of legal trans-
lation. Therefore, based on the finding, there is a significant dif-
ference across the three areas in terms of syntactic complexity.
Out of fourteen features, the UK and Hong Kong company laws
are identified as more spartan than the mainland company law.
Translation of legal documents makes the language under-
standable for the typical reader. However, people usually need
help understanding legal terms or legal jargon (Fig. 4).
In addition, the results show that the UK is the Inner Circle
and is responsible for establishing language standards. However,
while following these new norms, it has been observed through
the statistical analysis that a new version of norms is compara-
tively simplified and comprises plain English in legal drafting. On
the contrary, Hong Kong, as a colony of the UK, has been
impacted by the outer circle, but it still faces some of the influ-
ences of the Inner Circle.
The general questions underlying the analysis above were how
the translated and non-translated legal texts as reflected in the
company law differ across the three regions of China, Hong Kong
and the UK and to what extent plain English helps the people
understand legal communication. It is widely known that the
present Plain English Movement advocates for legal papers to be
simpler and more understandable to the common person. This
study conforms that plain English helps people to understand the
complex and ambiguous terms of legal discourse.
The study of Maaß & Rink (2021) asserts that “plain-language
texts do not necessitate the employment of parallel standard text
offers but can stand on their own and be read by all types of lay
users in a context of expert-lay communication, (p. 13)”. This
type of language is understandable to lay people and can help
people with communication problems communicate more effec-
tively. As a result, it may not have the action-enabling potential
that is required for inclusion if it is only used as a basis for
information retrieval. As a result of their familiar structure (both
syntactic and lexical), simple writings assist many lay people in
comprehending the linguistic intricacy of legal jargon (Adler,
2012; Asprey, 2010; Cheek, 2010; Cornelius, 2015; Dyer, 2017).
The trend of translating legal discourse made a tremendous
change in legal communication. Such a movement started from
the Inner Circle has also impacted countries and regions of the
Outer Circle. When creating legislation, basic and uncomplicated
vocabulary is used to ensure that the law is as precise and sub-
stantive as feasible without detracting from precision or substance
(Law Drafting Division, 2012: p. 88). More specifically, it provides
certain recommendations for crafting legislative text that is sim-
ple to comprehend. The impact of the Plain English Movement
has also had an impact on the legal writing standards in Hong
Kong, as previously stated. When compared to the United
Kingdom, the Plain English Movement has made such an impact
on Hong Kong that it has even gone as far as excessive. This
tendency is supported by our results regarding the employment of
conditioned grammatical constructions in this study.
In terms of syntactic level, the language of the Inner circle’s
legal matters comprises complex phrase structures, more parti-
cularly, complex nominal phrases and complex hypotaxis. Such
structure remains outside of the approach of users of the Outer
circle with communication impairments (Gutermuth, 2020).
Hansen-Schirra et al. (2020a) also explain that the language of the
Inner circle includes a high share of complex syntactic structures
that are typical for legal expert-expert communication. Therefore,
the translation of companies’ law removes the risk for unsuc-
cessful interaction with users who are laypersons in the Outer
Circle and Inner circle.
At region levels, there were significant differences between
Hong Kong, Mainland, and UK in the translation. However,
the findings for Hong Kong are primarily indicative of the
differences because of the adaptation of plain English for legal
communication, which enables lay people to understand the
complexity of sentences, phrases, or even technical terms of
companies’ laws.

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Regarding RQ1 and RQ2, our findings suggest that the plain
English movement has understandable norms for layman lan-
guage users. Bonsall et al. (2017) argue that plain English writing
exists, but language researchers generally describe plain English as
a way to use language to communicate information to the reader
effectively, (Frade, 2012, 2016; Navarro and Rodríguez, 2014).
Overall, the evidence from Tables 2 and 3 illustrate that sentences
are packed with too much legal jargon, which can be hard to
understand. In addition, these sentences often contain excessive
jargon and legalese, and syntactic complexity measures of com-
panies’ laws of Hong Kong region (Outer Circle) are found
simpler and less complex than Mainland.
The findings of this study show several implications for syn-
tactic complexity research; the results of the comparative analysis
of legal translations of the three regions differed in many ways.
Remarkably, the legal translation of Hong Kong and China sig-
nificantly differed. The UK’s plain English movement helps
people understand the complexity of legal discourses. These dif-
ferences indicate that the translation experience of legal laws of
companies enhances the understanding level and improves
communication performance. Secondly, the results revealed that
MLC, CP_T, and CP_C are only simpler versions. However, the
remaining features, such as MLS, MLT, CS, VP_T, C_T, DC_C,
and T_S, are complex in terms of syntactic features. Whereas the
new version mainland has variations, e.g., MLS, MLT, CS, VP_T,
C_T, DC_C, and T_S are simpler than the other features such as
MLC, CP_T, and CP_C. Based on the results of HK company
laws, the study suggests that China’s company should be trans-
lated into English to make the accessibility of laws to ordinary
people.
Conclusion
The study investigated the translated and non-translated legal text
while applying the theoretical underpinning of syntactic com-
plexity and plain English movement with a particular focus on
whether, as a result of the beginning of the plain-language
movement, legal language becomes easier to understand for the
general public. So, in terms of research question 1, the commu-
nicative and functional importance of syntactic complexity has
expanded from the horizons of L2 writing. Multilingual writers
must develop linguistically, function in instructional contexts well
and respond appropriately to the different demands of valued
genres, tasks, and contents that comprise their varied educational
experience. Using a corpus of company laws carefully sampled,
this study examined the differences in emerging legal translation
of three regions’ engagement with syntactic complexity.
Our analysis revealed significant differences between Hong
Kong and China regions concerning the syntactic complexity of
different syntactic features. The study concludes that there have
been efforts made to simplify the language in the UK and Hong
Kong, and there have even been regulations integrated into law in
both legal systems to ensure the simplicity of the legal language so
that it could be understandable for lay people. Despite these
efforts, it is still difficult for a layperson to understand it, and the
reason for this is the complexity of the law as a whole. For
example, it is only sometimes feasible to record a precise defini-
tion of a legal term in a way that makes it plain and avoids
ambiguity.
In addition, the study highlights that the Hong Kong version of
the legal text is simpler than the mainland legal texts, which
ultimately confirms that plain English helps people comprehend
legal jargon easily. Eagleson (2014) claims that ‘Plain English is a
supportive movement which is simple and straightforward, and it
uses only as many words as are essential. It is the language that
avoids obscurity, an exaggerated vocabulary, and a complex
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS | (2023)10:17 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01485-x
ARTICLE
sentence-construction structure. In no way does it resemble baby
speak or a simplified form of the English Language. The use of
plain English allows writers to focus their audience’s attention on
the message rather than getting sidetracked by sophisticated
terminology. As a result, they ensure that their target audience
receives the message without difficulty (p. 23).
Finally, the study recommends that researchers use syntactic
complexity measures when studying the implications for clarity in
firms’ legal discourse. At the same time, our archival evidence
suggests that, in certain instances, quantity-based readability
measures may also help explain specific outcomes for under-
standing legal jargon in the regions of the outer circle. Further
work into the validity of these theories could give insight into how
effectively to persuade legislators to integrate the results of our
and similar studies and help ease the mismatch between the
ubiquity and implausibility of legal texts in the modern period.
Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current
study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable
request.
Received: 14 April 2022; Accepted: 12 December 2022;
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Competing interests
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