Language is very personal. It's very reasonable to want to write in a way that feels natural to you, without constantly having to rephrase or simplify.

Surely most turns of phrase and references are easily googleable these days anyway, so it's not like it's even that hard to figure out. And if it is, you can do this amazing thing called 'asking'. I doubt the author will be mad that you want to know exactly what they meant when they wrote what they wrote.