Legibilidad de las normas internacionales de información financiera y su traducción al español

This paper compares the readability of the official text of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), written in English, with that of its translation into Latin American Spanish.A quantitative and descriptive approach based on readability indices is applied. Readability indices are mathematical equations derived from regression analysis, which measure the readability of a text based on certain semantic and syntactic attributes. The Flesch Reading Ease Index is used to measure the readability of IFRS in English, and the Spanish adaptations of this index, developed by Szigriszt Pazos and Fernández Huerta, are used to measure the readability of IFRS translated into Latin American Spanish.The results of this paper show that both the official text of IFRS and its translation into Latin American Spanish are difficult or very difficult to read, and are at the level of scientific or academic writings. However, the results do not show that IFRS translated into Latin American Spanish are significantly less readable than the original IFRS written in English. This seems to indicate that the "word-for-word" translation strategy promoted by the IFRS Foundation does not negatively affect the standards' readability.This work can contribute to accounting thinking because accounting research on readability is not sufficiently developed outside the English-speaking world and needs to be expanded. Very few studies have analyzed the readability of accounting standards, and none have addressed a body of accounting standards written or translated into Spanish. Furthermore, this work could help accounting standard-setting bodies find new tools to improve the quality of their regulations.