2023年经济学人 让人头疼的法律术语(2)（在线收听）

    Given the almost universal disdain for legal language, the obvious question is why it persists.

    鉴于几乎所有人都蔑视法律语言，有一个显而易见的问题是，为什么法律语言仍然存在。

    Mr Martinez and his colleagues examined several hypotheses.

    马丁内斯先生和他的同事检验了几个假设。

    One was “the curse of knowledge”.

    一个是“知识的诅咒”。

    This is the idea that many learned people do not know how to write for those less informed than themselves.

    这种观点认为，许多有学问的人不知道如何为那些比他们了解得少的人写作。

    But the researchers found that the lawyers struggle with legal language too.

    但研究人员发现，律师们也在法律语言上挣扎。

    They found the content of the legalese contracts harder to understand and remember.

    他们发现法律术语合同的内容更难理解记忆。

    So did laypeople, of course, but they remembered the simple contracts as well as the lawyers did the complex ones;当然，外行也一样，但他们记得简单的合同，就像律师记得复杂的合同一样;they understood them almost as well, too.

    他们也几乎能够互相理解。

    A more cynical idea was the “it’s just business” hypothesis.

    一个更愤世嫉俗的观点是“这只是业务”假说。

    This holds that lawyers are intentionally opaque so as to gull clients into paying more for their supposed expertise.

    这种观点认为，律师的写作故意不透明，以诱使客户为他们所谓的专业知识支付更多费用。

    But that did not fit the data either, for the lawyers believed their clients would be more likely to sign the simplified contracts than the standard ones.

    但这也不符合数据，因为律师们认为他们的客户更有可能签署简化的合同，而不是标准的合同。

    Perhaps legalese is a form of “in-group signalling”—behaviour used to signal belonging to a group, such as religious iconography or flag-waving at sports events, and aimed at fellow lawyers rather than clients?

    也许法律术语是一种“群体内信号”——用来表示属于一个群体的行为，比如宗教图像或在体育赛事中挥舞旗帜，针对的是律师同事而不是客户?

    But the lawyers in the test group said they would be more likely to hire the writers of the simplified contracts than the authors of the traditional gobbledygook.

    但测试组的律师表示，他们更有可能雇佣简化合同的作者，而不是传统官样文章的作者。

    The most common defence of legalese is the need for precision, says Mr Martinez (who trained as a lawyer before switching to cognitive science).

    马丁内斯先生(在转向认知科学之前曾接受过律师培训)表示，对法律术语最常见的辩护是对准确性的需求。

    Legal language, in this view, is too important to leave to the imprecisions of ordinary style.

    在这种观点中，法律语言太重要了，不能被普通文体的不精确影响。

    But this argument was refuted too: the lawyers who read the simplified contracts rated them just as enforceable as the complex ones.

    但这一论点也被反驳了:阅读简化合同的律师认为它们与复杂合同一样具有可执行性。

    The researchers were left with a simple conclusion, which they call the “copy-and-paste hypothesis”.

    研究人员得出了一个简单的结论，他们称之为“复制粘贴假说”。

    Lawyers imitate what previous lawyers have done.

    律师们会模仿前辈的做法。

    After all, a good deal of rote legal work (such as drawing up contracts) can be copied in large chunks from one document to another.

    毕竟，大量死记硬背的法律工作(比如起草合同)可以通过从一个文件大量复制内容从而完成。

    Whatever the reason, changing behaviour will be hard.

    不管是什么原因，改变行为都是困难的。

    Experts in legal writing have called for clearer prose for decades.

    几十年来，法律写作专家一直在呼吁撰写更清楚的文章。

    But the plague of legalese persists.

    但法律术语的困扰依然存在。

    Perhaps evidence from outside the profession will help change things—especially if it is written in plain language.

    也许来自专业之外的证据会有助于改变现状——尤其是当这些证据是用通俗易懂的语言写出来的时候。