Friday, November 05, 2010

Plain English

by Slate Labs

This product is still in development. Contact us if you have an idea for how to use it.

By Jeremy Singer-Vine.

Every field has its own jargon that's meaningless to everyone else. Sometimes you want to translate a given -ese into lay terms while preserving the original text. Plain English is designed to facilitate this.

The premise is straightforward: The original text is highlighted in yellow. When you click on a phrase, it toggles to the re-written simpler version, in gray. Buttons at the top allow you to toggle the whole thing at once. The words are stored in a simple JSON file.

Example: Federal Reserve jargon simplified.



* * * *

the following works, but doesn't have the gray and yellow highlighting of the original:

The Federal Reserve is about to create $600 billion out of thin air. It's a huge, experimental stimulus program that will affect stock markets and government policies around the world.

But the Fed announced its plan in a statement written largely in jargon and code. So here, from Planet Money and Slate, is today's statement, translated into plain English.









You can click on each sentence below to see our translation line by line. Or click "convert all" to translate the entire statement.

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