1. From Plain English to Plain Language to Plain French in Canada

In the 1991, the Canadian government established some general writing guidelines to be found in a widely distributed booklet: The Plain Language: Clear and Simple . Its French equivalent Pour un style clair et simple is also well distributed and appreciated both in the public and private sectors. The bilingual online version called "Plain Train" has also caught the imagination of other cultures, as it was translated into the Galician language. The stylistic recommendations are included in Termium, the "computerized terminology database" of the federal government, as part of its writing aids. Plain Language is therefore part of an effort to standardize official documents by making them also more accessible to all and easier to understand.

At the federal level, French being one of the two official languages, communications are mostly written in English (source language) and then translated into French (target language). Thus, any effort to write plainly in English is bound to be seen in the French text at the translation stage; generally speaking, the Plain English model has allowed some definite improvement in source texts, whether legal or not, and thus made the translator's work easier. Because the translator represents the front line audience, any textual ambiguity, for instance, is usually resolved with the author before proceeding to the translation. The French language being most frequently a target rather than a source language, the Plain English model has thus evolved into a Plain Language model by leading to the creation of a Plain French model in Canada. The application of the English solutions to the French language has been easy, in general, insofar as the English model meets the French audience needs.

At first, the general principles of plain English were not readily accepted by the legal community, whether English or French. Legal writing was not to be treated as lightly as general communications. It took some convincing, along the years, because of the lawyers' reluctance to change their approach to writing. Some statutes have been rewritten to espouse the Plain Language model in both official languages, for instance, the Employment Insurance Act. There is still work to do in very technical fields, such as tax and finances. In many other fields of government activities and types of documents, the change has been easier, with the momentum enjoyed by the international movement within Commonwealth and American jurisdictions. Once what was emerging as a legitimate school of thought made some progress within legal circles and found an application in various legal and legislative source texts, there however remained another hurdle to clear in order to make the model really universal: the bijuridical character of Canadian institutions with Common Law and Civil Law.

Civil Law is a factor to reckon with in Canadian legal writing, as far as its particular vocabulary, its logical framework and processes and its linguistic tradition influenced by Latin, all embodied under the term "legistics". Though Civil Law applies to Quebec institutions, the Supreme Court refers to it for interpretation. The French audience is generally inspired by a Civil Law culture, even if the substance of the communication is Common Law. If source texts are often conceived in the Common Law style of expression, on the one hand, the French language used in the translation is often influenced by Canadian Civil Law as a system and as a culture. Because writing and drafting stylistic choices and decisions are made at the source and not at the target level, the assurance of clarity in the French text is sometimes a difficult task, due to the combination of all factors.