A corpus of294 abstracts submitted in response to a Professional association 'callfor papers' was analyzed on the basis offive features: thematic structure; clause structure; pragmatic moves (Swales, 1981); propositional organization; and lexical cohesion. Abstracts of this type were found to: differ in a number ofwaysfrom other abstract types; constitute Condensed, reducedforms, containing fully elaborated syntactic structures, but employing syntactic and semantic devices which contribute to compaction; be extremely propositionally dense; be lexically rieh, but be constrained by topic, genre, and the needfor compaction; employ redundancy both syntactically and lexically; follow the 'Introduction^Methods^Results-* Conclusion structure previously described for fully elaborated scientific articles, in compacted form; be topic-based and detached rather than interactional and involved, reflecting strategies that position the writer in relation to thepaper, the research paradigm, and the worid; be füll of Jargon, acronyms, repetitions, adjectival modifications, subordinate clauses, and noniinalizalions, and include occasional parentlietical citations, in somc instances even modest bibliographies; eschew the use of past tense verbs, third person pronouns, and passive constructions; be influenced by pronominal conventions employed more generally in scientific writing; be influenced by the presence of at least four rhetorical features, in descending order of importance: introducing the study; establishing the field; presenting the results; describing research.

In the U.S., the Community Reinvestment (CRA) and Home Mortgage Disclosure Acts (HMDA) have focused attention on fair lending practices. The CRA mandates banks to serve all communities, including minority and low-income populations, within their geographic boundaries. One test regulators use to determine compliance examines percentages of minority group loans in banks' HMD A data. In 1993, HMD A data showed lower percentages of home loans to Latinos l in California. This finding belies a study by Dataquick Information Systems showing that Latinos constitute the fastest growing home buyer group in Los Angeles County. However, iristead of seeking löahs fröm banks, maiiy Latinos ütilize non-bank resources. Touchstone (1995) argues that Latinos use non-bank sources because Los Angeles banks provide inadequate minority language Services. Kaplan, Touchstone, and Hagstrom (1995) have focused on one area of such Services: written brochures and their translation problems. From this research, they developed a translationmiscue paradigm implicating three types of problems: i) translation error, ii) translation misfit, and iii) translation omission. The current study focuses on English and Spanish home mortgage brochures, demonstrating that these are also marked by the same translation miscues.

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Los Angeles is perhaps t he most polyglot city on earth. Businesses operating in this multicultural, multilingual Community should, one would think, wish to take cognizance ofthis linguistic and cultural diver sity in order to increase their respective market share. This paper explores written business communication in thirty-four bank branches which operate in identifiable ethnic communities-Japanese, Chinese, and Hispanic.The objective ofthe study is to determine corporate commitment to multilingualism, and to analyze specific attempts by banks to reach out to nonEnglish-speaking communities. Two types of written texts were examined using, where appropriate, Standard discourse analytic processes äs well äs ethnographic procedures: (1) brochures describing bank Services, and (2) written instructions to customers, especially those associated with the use ofautomated teuer machines (which are really a subset of brochures).The study compares documents written in English with equivalent documents written in Japanese, Chinese and Spanish. Particular attention ispaid to Information presentation. Three types of translation problems are defined and described in the texts: (1) translation error; (2) translation misfit; and (3) translation omission.The results of these comparisons show that there is a substantial failure on the pari of banks in Los Angeles to serve their non-English-speaking clientele. The economic consequences for banks that do not adequately interact with that significant segment of the market can be inferred. 1 The findings of this study suggest that corporate banking policies concerning written banking documents reflect banks' compliance with regulations, though the policies may not be entirely ejfective. It is hoped that languageplanning efforts by banks might be applied more uniformly and strategically to enhance profitability in minority language communities and to serve minority communities more effectively. 0165-4888/95/0015-0427