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Source text - English A Dazed and Confused America
If you ever find yourself scratching your head at document after document and form after form as you go through your life, and you wonder whether it’s just you who doesn’t seem to understand papers that everyone else deals with, too… it’s not you. It’s the forms and documents. They’re simply confusing.
The brand strategy firm Siegel & Gale has released the results of their latest quarterly “Perplexity Poll,” and the results aren’t pretty for many entities. Here are some results:
• The five most perplexing information sources are insurance documents, financial documents, legal documents, product instruction manuals, and computer-related documents.
• The five-most-difficult-to understand documents are mortgage applications, health insurance benefits forms, federal income tax returns, newspaper stock market listings, and investment account statements.
• The five documents rated easiest to understand were payroll stubs, checking account statements, airplane safety instruction cards, credit card statements, and catalog order forms.
Why are some so clear?
As I scanned the three lists above, wondering why some things are so complicated and some so clear, I had a few thoughts.
For starters, some of the documents that are easy to understand are that way because of motivation. Airlines have little reason to want uninformed and confused passengers in the unlikely event of an emergency. Lives are at stake, and they want everyone to know what to do. Similarly, mail order businesses depend on customers filling out order forms. They’d kill their own business if these forms were difficult to understand and use.
Credit card statements and checking account statements, on the other hand, may be clear mainly because they are not conveying very complicated information. One lists all your cash inflows and outflows, which are usually limited to only a few different kinds (ATM transactions, interest payments, checks written, etc.), and the other lists all your purchases and payments and includes your debt totals, as well.
Why are so murky?
Let’s consider some of the documents that got low ratings. It is hard to imagine some of them being anything but complicated because their subject matter is complicated – think of legal documents, for example, or product instruction manuals, including ones for computers or software. Still, even these items could be improved. If you compare manuals for five different brands of computers, you will likely find that some are much clearer than others. To some degree, it depends on the underlying product and how it was designed. Some products, though they may be complete, are still simple to use. Another thought is that if computers were more robust and didn’t experience failures of so many kinds, manuals wouldn’t need to devote so much space to troubleshooting.
Tax return forms were cited as being confusing. This is no surprise to me. I remember hearing that an astonishing percent of the time, when we call the IRS with tax-related questions, we get incorrect information from IRS employees. It is easy to conclude that they are incompetent – but the blame should rest more on our tax system and its complexity.
A CATO Institute article noted that “… income taxes are hard to understand and the rules now span 60,044 pages, according to CCH Ins. Americans are baffled by the complex rules on capital gains, savings plans, education incentives, and other items. The IRS is also baffled – recent Treasury investigations found that IRS employees gave incorrect tax answers anywhere from 55 percent and 83 percent of the time”.
But let’s move on to the other financial documents.
Stock market listings
Many people are befuddled when reading stock listings in newspapers.
A Dazed and Confused America
If you ever find yourself scratching your head at document after document and form after form as you go through your life, and you wonder whether it’s just you who doesn’t seem to understand papers that everyone else deals with, too… it’s not you. It’s the forms and documents. They’re simply confusing.
The brand strategy firm Siegel & Gale has released the results of their latest quarterly “Perplexity Poll,” and the results aren’t pretty for many entities. Here are some results:
• The five most perplexing information sources are insurance documents, financial documents, legal documents, product instruction manuals, and computer-related documents.
• The five-most-difficult-to understand documents are mortgage applications, health insurance benefits forms, federal income tax returns, newspaper stock market listings, and investment account statements.
• The five documents rated easiest to understand were payroll stubs, checking account statements, airplane safety instruction cards, credit card statements, and catalog order forms.
Why are some so clear?
As I scanned the three lists above, wondering why some things are so complicated and some so clear, I had a few thoughts.
For starters, some of the documents that are easy to understand are that way because of motivation. Airlines have little reason to want uninformed and confused passengers in the unlikely event of an emergency. Lives are at stake, and they want everyone to know what to do. Similarly, mail order businesses depend on customers filling out order forms. They’d kill their own business if these forms were difficult to understand and use.
Credit card statements and checking account statements, on the other hand, may be clear mainly because they are not conveying very complicated information. One lists all your cash inflows and outflows, which are usually limited to only a few different kinds (ATM transactions, interest payments, checks written, etc.), and the other lists all your purchases and payments and includes your debt totals, as well.
Why are so murky?
Let’s consider some of the documents that got low ratings. It is hard to imagine some of them being anything but complicated because their subject matter is complicated – think of legal documents, for example, or product instruction manuals, including ones for computers or software. Still, even these items could be improved. If you compare manuals for five different brands of computers, you will likely find that some are much clearer than others. To some degree, it depends on the underlying product and how it was designed. Some products, though they may be complete, are still simple to use. Another thought is that if computers were more robust and didn’t experience failures of so many kinds, manuals wouldn’t need to devote so much space to troubleshooting.
Tax return forms were cited as being confusing. This is no surprise to me. I remember hearing that an astonishing percent of the time, when we call the IRS with tax-related questions, we get incorrect information from IRS employees. It is easy to conclude that they are incompetent – but the blame should rest more on our tax system and its complexity.
A CATO Institute article noted that “… income taxes are hard to understand and the rules now span 60,044 pages, according to CCH Ins. Americans are baffled by the complex rules on capital gains, savings plans, education incentives, and other items. The IRS is also baffled – recent Treasury investigations found that IRS employees gave incorrect tax answers anywhere from 55 percent and 83 percent of the time”.
But let’s move on to the other financial documents.
Stock market listings
Many people are befuddled when reading stock listings in newspapers.
Translation - Spanish Estados Unidos de América, un país aturdido y confundido
Si en el transcurso de la vida, alguna vez se encuentra rascándose la cabeza ante una pila de documentos y formularios, y se pregunta si es precisamente usted quien no parece entender los papeles que todos los demás manejan,… sepa que no es solo usted. Son los formularios y los documentos. Es que, francamente, son confusos.
La empresa de estudios de mercado Siegel & Gale ha publicado los resultados de su último estudio trimestral “Encuesta sobre la perplejidad”, y las conclusiones no son alentadoras para muchas entidades. A continuación, vea algunas:
• Las cinco fuentes de información más desconcertantes son: documentos referentes a seguros, documentos financieros y legales, manuales de instrucciones de productos y documentos relacionados con la computadora.
• Los cinco documentos más difíciles de comprender son las solicitudes de hipoteca, los formularios para prestaciones de seguro de salud, las declaraciones de impuestos federales sobre la renta, las listas de la bolsa de valores de los periódicos y los estados de las cuentas de inversiones.
• Los cinco documentos clasificados como los más fáciles de comprender fueron los talones de pago de salarios, los estados de cuenta corriente, las tarjetas de instrucción acerca de la seguridad de los aviones, los balances de las tarjetas de crédito y los formularios de órdenes de compra por catálogo.
¿Por qué algunos son tan claros?
Mientras revisaba estas tres listas, preguntándome por qué algunas cosas son tan complicadas y otras tan simples, se me ocurrieron varias ideas.
Para comenzar, algunos documentos son fáciles de comprender debido a su motivación. Las compañías aéreas tienen poco interés en que, en un improbable caso de emergencia, sus pasajeros estén desinformados y confundidos. Hay vidas en juego, y quieren que todos sepan qué hacer. Del mismo modo, los negocios de venta por catálogo dependen de los clientes, que hacen sus pedidos llenando formularios. Arruinarían su propio negocio si los formularios fueran difíciles de comprender y de usar.
Por otro lado, los estados de las tarjetas de crédito y los de las cuentas corrientes pueden ser claros, sobre todo porque la información que transmiten no es muy complicada. Uno de ellos enumera todas sus entradas y salidas de fondos, que por lo general se limitan a pocos tipos de transacciones (de cajero automático, pago de intereses, cheques firmados, etc.); y otro es una lista de sus compras y sus pagos, incluyendo además su deuda total.
¿Por qué algunos son tan confusos?
Veamos algunos de los documentos que tuvieron clasificaciones bajas. Hay algunos que no pueden dejar de ser complicados porque el tema es de por sí complicado – pensemos en documentos legales, por ejemplo, o en manuales de instrucción de productos entre ellos, los de computadoras o software. De todos modos, incluso estos temas se podrían mejorar. Si usted compara los manuales de cinco marcas diferentes de computadoras, es probable que encuentre que algunos son menos confusos de entender que otros. Hasta cierto punto, depende del producto en sí, y de cómo esté diseñado. Algunos productos a pesar de ser muy complicados son fáciles de usar. Otra idea es que, si las computadoras tuvieran un mejor desempeño, y no presentaran tantas fallas de distintos tipos, los manuales no tendrían que dedicar tanto espacio a la solución de problemas.
Ya hemos citado los formularios de la declaración de impuestos como confusos. Esto a mí no me sorprende. Recuerdo haber oído que un porcentaje asombroso de veces, cuando llamamos al Servicio de Impuestos Internos (Internal Revenue Service o IRS, por sus siglas en inglés) con preguntas referentes a impuestos, la información que recibimos de los empleados es incorrecta. Es lógico de deducir que son incompetentes – pero en realidad la culpa se debe atribuir más a nuestro sistema fiscal y a su complejidad.
Un artículo del Instituto de CATO observa que los “impuestos sobre la renta… son difíciles de comprender, y las reglas abarcan ahora 60.044 páginas, según el instituto de CCH. Los estadounidenses se sienten desconcertados ante la complejidad de las reglas sobre ganancias de capital, planes de ahorro, incentivos de educación y otros temas. También el IRS está desconcertado – en investigaciones recientes, la Tesorería descubrió que los empleados del IRS dieron respuestas incorrectas a consultas tributarias entre el 55 al 83 por ciento de las veces”.
Pero pasemos a los otros documentos financieros.
Listas de bolsa de valores
Muchas personas quedan perplejas cuando leen las listas de valores en los periódicos.
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Translation education
Bachelor's degree - Universidad Tecnologica Argentina
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Years of experience: 45. Registered at ProZ.com: Jun 2006.
Technical translator hired by NIH, FDA, HHS and USP; creator of bilingual computarized glossaries in pharmaceutical fields. Also vast experience related to international legal fields, public health and advertising/marketing.
Translating and editing for USA Government agencies and international associations since 1989.
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