Plain Language in Hong Kong Bilingual Laws

This study aims to describe the plain language use in the Hong Kong bilingual

system, which officially commenced with the publication of a drafting guide book by

the Department of Justice of Hong Kong in 2012. It will mainly examine two areas:

first, the ongoing governmental efforts in drafting English legislation in plain

language; second, the suggestions of drafting Chinese legislation in plain language;

and third, the suggestions of drafting and translating judgments. During around 150

years of colonial rule by the United Kingdom, the Hong Kong common law system

has been using English as the official language to draft laws. Starting around the late

1980s, Chinese started to be another official legal language when the Hong Kong

Government started a large-scale project to translate the existing laws into Chinese,

and co-draft new laws in both English and Chinese. In 1995, the first translated

Chinese judgment was produced. In 2012, influenced by the other common law

jurisdictions, plain language was officially introduced to draft the English version of

Hong Kong legislation. While the endeavour of creating plain legislative English is a

direct borrowing from the West, the home-grown developments, that is, the proposed

change in plain legal Chinese and plain judicial language, remain to be experimented

and investigated.