Robert Reck examines culturally conditioned differences in the use of English as the lingua franca of business reporting and describes the foundations of the cultural imprint on verbal accounting information. He identifies intellectual styles as language-shaping determinants and exploratively demonstrates, using an international dataset, that linguistic differences are evident in both complexity and the use of certain parts of speech. He investigates linguistic discrepancies between IFRS and US GAAP reports. Through a translation study focusing on risk reports and appendices, the author shows that native language characteristics can be transferred to the English translation.