By Cliff Goddard, editor of Minimal English for a Global World and Minimal Languages in Action

Communication campaigns authored in a single language, such as English, almost always underestimate the challenges involved in having messages translated into other languages or adapted into simplified, more accessible versions. When coupled with tight time frames, the danger that key aspects will get lost in translation is very real.

Minimal languages offer a new approach to clear and accessible communication, based on linguistic research into how meanings are packaged differently in different languages (Goddard ed. 2018, in press/2021). A minimal language is a radically simplified language consisting only of simple words and grammar patterns which can be easily transferred between languages. Ideally, anything said in Minimal English can be transferred, almost word for word, into Minimal Korean, Minimal Chinese, Minimal Spanish, and so on. Another term for the same approach, especially when used in professional contexts, is Clear, Explicit, Translatable Language (acronym: CETL).

How does this connect with COVID-19? Like other emergencies, a pandemic places special stress on public communication (Li et al. 2020). Public messaging has to reach people who do not have a high level of ability in the English language: people without much formal education, people with cognitive disabilities, communities in which English is not the dominant language. For all these reasons, experts in crisis communication recommend a “plain language” approach.

Unfortunately, however, what is plain in one language is often not plain in another. Consider familiar expressions like: ‘Shortness of breath’, ‘Keep 1.5 metres away from other people’, and ‘Stop the spread’. They are written in plain English, but they cannot be directly transposed into Chinese or Korean, or even into European languages such as Spanish or Danish. Nor, on closer examination, are such expressions as clear and easy-to-understand as one might think. It’s often the case that “easy-to-translate” implies “easy-to-understand”, and vice versa.

So let’s see some examples of a minimal language approach applied to COVID-19, starting with ‘Keep 1.5 metres away from other people’. Re-worked into translatable words and grammar, the essential message may be stated as follows: Don’t be so near people that you can touch them, (plus, if space permits) Don’t be so near people that you breathe the same air. Yes, this is longer but, in my view, it is also conceptually better in that it hints at the reason behind the instruction.

Here is another example. It is something you can say to a child while waiting to get a COVID vaccine injection: A nurse (or doctor) will give you an injection. After that, a little bit COVID-19 vaccine will be in your body. Some good things will happen in your body because of this. After this, if coronavirus is in your body, you won’t get very sick because of it. Obviously this little text doesn’t explain everything, but it arguably captures the key points for a young child.

Minimal languages can also be used for giving moral and spiritual advice. For example, in 2020 linguist Anna Wierzbicka composed her ‘Seven Essential Messages for the time of the coronavirus’ in Minimal English. Published online, they have since been translated into many languages. One of Wierzbicka’s key ideas is that the time of this pandemic, though limiting and troubling in so many ways, can offer us opportunity and motivation to think more about the big questions in life. Questions like: Why do I live on earth? What do I live for? How can I live if I want to live well?. And even: If I know that I will die soon, what do I want to do before I die? These four questions about ‘me’ are closely related to questions about other people, such as: We all live with other people. None of us is like an island. How can we live well with other people?

Commenting on the reception the Seven Messages elicited around the world (‘moving’, ‘inspiring’, ‘beautiful’), Wierzbicka observed that the use of simple, baseline words can “speak directly to the heart, without the distancing devices afforded by complex, abstract and intellectualised language”. 

I will close with two points. For some people the term minimal language may call to mind the failed project of Basic English, a system from the 1930s and 1940s by which all everyday uses of English could supposedly be expressed using 850 words. Despite its name, however, this system was not based on simple words – it included hundreds of complicated words, such as ‘authority’, ‘experience’, ‘political’, ‘suggestion’, ‘structure’ – nor was it designed with translatability in mind.

Finally, it has to be admitted that writing in words that are easy-to-understand and easy-to-translate is no easy matter. It takes skill, training and practice to become adept at expressing oneself in a very small vocabulary. Equally, when considering complex ideas it can be challenging to isolate the most important things and work out the best order in which to say them. 

In the end, however, the effort is worth it. There is power in simple words.

Cliff Goddard is Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University, Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Much of his research lies at the intersection of language, meaning and culture. He has published widely in descriptive, theoretical and applied semantics, language description and typology, ethnopragmatics and intercultural communication.

References

Li, Yuming, Rao Gaoqi, Zhang Jie and Li Jia. 2020. Conceptualizing national emergency language competence. Multilingua, 39(5): 617–623 [doi.org/10.1515/multi-2020-0111]

Goddard, Cliff. Ed. 2018. Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Palgrave Macmillan.

Goddard, Cliff. Ed. in press/2021. Minimal Languages in Action. Palgrave Macmillan. [publication expected May 2021]

Goddard, Cliff and Wierzbicka, Anna. in press/2021. Semantics in the time of coronavirus: “Virus”, “bacteria”, “germs”, “disease” and related concepts. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 25(1): 7-23. [DOI: 10.22363/2687‐0088‐2021‐25‐1‐7‐23] Open access.

Wierzbicka, Anna. 2020. Seven essential messages for the time of the Coronavirus. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24(2): 253-258. [doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-2020-24-2-253-258] Open access.