I've noticed in some French translations from English, there seems to be the use of "le" in sentences with seemingly no antecedent:
For example, Scotiabank's motto "You're richer than you think" becomes
Similarly, the common warning on car mirrors "Objects are closer than they appear" becomes
In both cases, I don't know why "le" appears before the final verb. When learning French in school, I was taught that "le" can serve as a direct object pronoun referring to something earlier in the sentence, like
J'ai vu un livre rouge et je l'ai acheté.
However, in the cases
Vous êtes plus riche que vous le croyez
Les objets réfléchis par le rétroviseur sont plus près qu'ils ne le paraissent
it's not clear what "le" refers to (especially in the second sentence, where "objets" is plural).
Does this particular phenomenon have a name in French? I apologize if this has already been asked; it is just confusing for me as a French learner.
