Leichte Sprache A Case Study on Causative and Conditional Sentences

Abstract

This research aims to examine the concept of “Leichte Sprache” (Easy language) and its associated linguistic practices, which have been created to tackle the textual complexity issue and ensure people with special needs access to information so that they may participate equally in society. At present, there are “Easy-to-Read” guidelines that have been developed by various institutions; however, these differ in many respects. The focus of this research is therefore on analyzing the practices used when transforming standard German text into “Leichte Sprache”, particularly, in causative and conditional sentences. The analyzed data were collected from eight texts produced by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of Germany; four of which are in standard German, while the other four are “Easy-to-Read” versions. The result suggests that “denotative equivalence” and “pragmati cequivalence” were widely used. Moreover, some information from the source text was omitted in the translated texts. Additionally, further syntactic analysis showed surprisingly high use of the subordinate conjunctions “wenn” (if) and “weil” (because), in which verbs are placed at the end of the s entence, a strategy which conflicts with the “Easy-to-Read” guidelines of some renowned institutions. The use of the conjunctive adverbs “deshalb” and “darum” (therefore) placed a distant second, followed by the coordinating conjunction “denn” (because).