Simple is sufficient

The use of technical and misleading jargon is rampant among modern-day professionals around the world. Besides conveying nothing, their usage blocks debate, arrests analysis and resists interrogation. The jargon-filled ornamental language may mesmerise the audience, but can hardly communicate any meaning of substance.

The main purpose of any language is to communicate thoughts as clearly as possible. One should be able to invoke a glimpse of the original vision from where the thoughts first emerged. The use of a term that is well defined and widely accepted enhances communication. Quotations also play a very important role in the process of communication. A suitable and timely quotation can provide, in a flash, deep insight to the essence of what one wishes to communicate. But, using fast emerging jargon that conceals or twists the real intrinsic meanings or rampant use of quotations just to impress the listener is a huge blockage to effective communication.

My secondary school headmaster was a man of letters. And yet, his English was always simple. He used to say, “Keep your sentences short. Use simple vocabulary. Concentrate on the thought that you want to convey.” I find his teaching being echoed in the phrase commonly used nowadays, KISS (Keep It Simple and Straight).

I am also reminded of an incident. The first Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore translated his own winning work, ‘Gitanjali’ from his native language ‘Bengali’ to English. This translation was submitted to a team of English language experts in Great Britain, who proposed a small change with respect to grammar. Tagore accepted it. But, when he was reciting this translation before an august audience in Great Britain, WB Yeats expressed his unhappiness exactly at the spot where the change was made. He insisted Tagore on reverting to his original version, even though it was grammatically incorrect, since it conveyed the real spirit more effectively. Grammar can sometimes be the graveyard of language.

If I am unable to convey the essence of my thoughts in the simplest of language to the commonest of persons appealing to his/her common sense, then I have failed in the purpose of communication.