The Translation Problem

How I Learned to Speak the Court’s Language

In the beginning, I spoke human and the court spoke code. I poured truth into paragraphs, and it came back to me as silence. It took months to understand that the system wasn’t broken—it was just bilingual. The language I knew was emotion. The language it answered to was structure.

My turning point came with a single motion that I thought was perfect. It was honest, detailed, full of context. It was denied in one sentence: “Insufficient factual basis.” I reread it for hours, furious. Then I looked at the order again. The judge hadn’t said I was wrong—just unclear.

That’s when I started translating.

I began writing like a clerk instead of a storyteller. Dates first. Facts next. Law last. One claim per paragraph. No adjectives. No blame. The less I tried to sound intelligent, the more the message landed. Clarity became my only argument.

Once I learned the rhythm, everything changed. I stopped telling the court what I wanted and started showing the steps that led there. I stopped writing for sympathy and started writing for sequence.

The translation problem isn’t personal. The system just reads a different language. You can rage against it, or you can learn to write it fluently. That’s the choice every pro se litigant has to make.

Now I write in two voices at once: the human one that knows the story and the procedural one that knows how to carry it. Together, they speak something the court can finally understand.