We have recorded a video tutorial so that you can see how to use the two arText system tools: arText (for writing textual genres in specialized fields) and arText claro (for writing texts in plain language).
It lasts less than 7 minutes and you can watch it here:
We have updated the dissemination brochure to promote sistema arText. You can find it in a bilingual version (Spanish-English).
Iria da Cunha participated in the IV edition of Un Mundo de Fusión Digital, which took place yesterday at the headquarters of the Escuelas Pías in UNED Madrid. This event aimed to open a dialogue between humanities and technology through various conversations between professionals from different fields. Iria da Cunha participated in the space dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) along with other specialists. She explained the importance of the sistema arText in the current context and highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary work to achieve integrative and respectful projects in the fields of AI, humanities and technology. The full program is available here and a photo gallery of the event can be viewed here.
Iria da Cunha and Juan Antonio Núñez Cortés participated in the II Jornadas Online de Proyectos de Investigación I+D+i held by the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas at UNED. The conference, presented by M. Dolores Castrillo, Department’s director, included four competitive research projects that are currently underway and concluded with a round table on good practices in the implementation of R&D+i projects. Iria da Cunha presented the project “Un prototipo tecnológico para la redacción en lenguaje claro: incorporación en la Administración pública y análisis de su impacto en la ciudadanía“ (arText_IMPACT). Also, Juan Antonio Núñez talked about one of the studies being carried out in the framework of arText_IMPACT: “Comprensión lectora, percepción de claridad y herramientas digitales“. You can retrieve all the presentations of the conference at this link and, also, you can see the talks concerning the sistema arText below:
Jenny Azarian has joined the arText team in the framework of the arText_IMPACT project, funded by the 2022 call for “Prueba de Concepto” projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2022-2024).
In addition, Jenny is currently carrying out a PhD in the Doctoral Program in Philology at UNED. The topic of her thesis is related to the evaluation of the impact of the use of arText claro on the comprehension and the perceived clarity of texts by vulnerable groups.
Iria da Cunha, director of the arText team and lecturer at the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas from the Facultad de Filología at UNED, has given the TREMÉDICA cyberseminar entitled “Herramientas y recursos de tecnología lingüística para la medicina” (Language technology tools and resources for medicine). In the course, Iria showed several language technology tools and resources that can be useful for humanistic profiles and health professionals.One of these tools is the arText system, which helps to write texts from different specialized fields, including medicine.
Yesterday, Sara Pistola, member of the arText team and student of the PhD program in Philology at UNED, gave a seminar entitled “Teaching Administrative Law through its textual genres” as part of the pre and post-doctoral seminars of the arText team. In this forum, Sara Pistola contextualized her research and presented the objectives, methodology and preliminary results of her doctoral thesis.
M. Ángeles Escobar and Eva Samaniego, members of the arText team and professors at the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas from the Facultad de Filología in UNED, participated in the 40th International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA 2023). The conference was held in Mérida on April 26-28. The paper presented by M. Ángeles and Eva is entitled “An English-Spanish contrastive analysis of the recommendations on plain language in the legal-administrative field” and is part of the TIC-eADMIN project.
The arText system has reached 200,000 users. Thank you very much to those of you who make it possible for our project to continue to grow from Spain, Mexico, Chile…🎉
Yesterday we started with the biweekly research seminar mainly for arText team pre- and post-doctoral researchers. The seminars aim to be a meeting point to share progress, put ideas in common, establish links between the team members, follow up on the various ongoing projects and disseminate areas of scientific interest. In short, these seminars aim to be a collaborative space to highlight plain language and areas of interest in this discipline.
On March 22 we participated in the conference “Comunicación clara y lenguaje administrativo. Por una administración al servicio de las personas”, organized by the Conselleria de Participació, Transparència, Cooperació i Qualitat Democràtica of the Generalitat Valenciana. Iria da Cunha gave a talk entitled “Herramientas y recursos para la comunicación clara”, in which she presented technological tools related to plain language, such as arText claro.
The recording of the presentation can be viewed here:
On March 15, the presentation of the book “Lenguaje claro y tecnología en la Administración”, published in the Interlingua Collection of Editorial Comares, was held at the Escuelas Pías location of the UNED (Madrid). This book is the result of the research carried out by the arText team within the framework of two projects financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation:
The recording of the presentation can be viewed on YouTube:
On January 18th we were in Zaragoza, in the Workshop on Comunicación clara para unidades de Transparencia organized by the Laboratorio de Aragón [Gobierno] Abierto (LAAAB). The workshop brought together several specialists to talk about transparency and clear communication. In addition, we had the opportunity to show the attendees the possibilities offered by arText claro to write administrative texts addressed to citizens in a simpler language.
Carlos José Blandón Ruiz has defended his TFM entitled “ArText como recurso didáctico para la redacción de textos expositivos” at the Universidad Panamericana de Nicaragua. In his work, he has used arText as a didactic resource to develop the writing skills of a group of high school students. The director of the TFM was Dr. Margarita Míxter Moreno.
Thank you, Carlos, for bringing arText to Nicaragua and for exploring new applications of the system!
Iria da Cunha, coordinator of arText, has participated in a video of the Ministry of Finance and Civil Service to explain the academic and scientific work carried out at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). In the video, he also talks about the arText system, which is currently being developed in the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of that university.
You can watch the video here:
On December 21, 2022, the final resolution by which the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation awarded the grants for “Prueba de concepto” 2022 projects was published. Our project “A technological prototype for writing in plain language: incorporation in public administration and analysis of its impact on citizens” (arText_IMPACT) has been one of those selected. It will last 2 years and to carry it out we have obtained a funding of 109,250 euros. Let’s go for it!
We are very happy to announce the publication of the book entitled “Lenguaje claro y tecnología en la Administración”, edited by Iria da Cunha and with the participation of several members of the arText team as authors of the different chapters. The prologue is written by Ricardo Mairal, rector of the UNED. The book is published in the Interlingua collection of Editorial Comares and includes part of the research carried out in the context of the TIC-eADMIN project, one of the projects through which arText has been developed in recent years.
You can obtain more information about the book at the following link: https://www.comares.com/libro/lenguaje-claro-y-tecnologia-en-la-administracion_145665/
Recently, the Ministry of Universities has awarded a María Zambrano grant for the attraction of international talent to Sabela Fernández Silva, assistant professor at the Instituto de Literatura y Ciencias del Lenguaje of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. On January 1st she will join the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of the UNED to work on the development of new functionalities of arText for 2 years.
Congratulations! We are very happy to be able to expand our team.
On December 20, El País con tu futuro 2022 was held, an annual professional orientation meeting for young people organized by El País. Iria da Cunha, coordinator of arText, participated to introduce the field of computational linguistics. Among other applications of this field of artificial intelligence, she mentioned arText.
The recording of the event is available on the YouTube channel of El País. A summary of the day can be found in this article.
On December 2 and 16 we gave a workshop on “La redacción del TFG en el contexto de la comunicación especializada” for the students of the Degree in Catalan Studies at the Universidad de Valencia. During the workshop, we showed the attendees the possibilities offered by the arText system for writing the TFG.
Many thanks to Josep E. Ribera, coordinator of the degree, for the invitation!
On December 7, an article entitled “Las inventoras españolas dicen ‘Eureka’ (y sí, en esto ganamos a Europa)” was published in Yo Dona magazine. In it, the author Mar Muñiz talks about four Spanish women inventors from different fields of knowledge. One of them is Iria da Cunha, responsible for the arText system.
On December 1st we gave a workshop at UIC Barcelona on “Cómo hacer un trabajo científico” as part of the “Student Academic Conference 2023: Caring for the Future”. In it, we were able to show students how to use arText to write their papers.
Thank you very much, Mònica Argemí, for the invitation!
Recently, the Ministry of Universities has granted Laia Vidal, professor at the Facultad de Traducción y Ciencias del Lenguaje of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and researcher of the IULATERM group, a Margarita Salas postdoctoral grant. On January 1st she will join the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of UNED to work on the development of new functionalities of arText for 2 years.
Congratulations, Laia! We are glad that you are part of our team.
Jia Chen is carrying out her doctoral thesis in the framework of the arText project thanks to the PhD program in Education of the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). The topic of her thesis is: “Teaching Chinese university students to write administrative texts in Spanish with the help of arText”. The directors are: Juan Antonio Núñez, coordinator of the Centro de Escritura at UAM, and Iria da Cunha, head of the arText project.
Currently, three doctoral theses related to arText are in progress.
The Grado en Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad de Cádiz invited us to give the workshop “Asesoría lingüística, lenguaje claro y salidas laborales” on November 23rd. Among other issues, we showed the possibilities offered by arText claro for writing administrative texts addressed to citizens in plain language.
Here in the picture with the colleages from the Instituto de Lingüística Aplicada de la Universidad de Cádiz who attended the conference.
On November 22, we gave a workshop at the Instituto de Lingüística Aplicada (ILA) of the University of Cadiz called “Herramientas automáticas para la revisión lingüística y la redacción en lenguaje claro”. Among other information, we showed the attendees the possibilities offered by arText claro for revising and writing administrative texts in plain language.
On November 21, the first session of the workshop “La escritura del TFG y del TFM en Educación” was held at the Centro de Escritura of the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Juan Antonio Núñez, coordinator of the Centro de Escritura of the UAM, invited us to give the inaugural session of the workshop, which talked about “Estructura y contenidos prototípicos de un TFG y un TFM”. Among other issues, the students were shown the arText functionality that helps to structure and write the Trabajo de Fin de Grado.
Last year, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Madrid City Council signed the “Protocolo de colaboración en investigación científica en materia de comunicación clara”. The motivation of this document was that the Madrid City Council, through the Subdirección General de Calidad y Evaluación, would collaborate in the TIC-eADMIN research project. Now, an addendum has been signed to extend this collaboration until April 2024 with the aim of continuing to work together in the development and implementation of the new functionalities of arText claro.
In the picture, members of the UNED and the Madrid City Council at the signing ceremony of the collaboration agreement, which took place in October 2021.
On October 26 and 27, the course “La carrera investigadora: de los inicios a la consolidación” was held in Madrid. As part of this event, Iria da Cunha gave the talk “Cómo ser IP en Humanidades: algunos apuntes”. In it, she talked about her role as the principal investigator of the funded projects in which arText has been developed so far.
The course can be viewed in its entirety on the YouTube channel of the Academia Joven de España, one of the organizers of the event. Iria da Cunha’s presentation can also be seen here:
On October 26, 2022, the provisional resolution of the 2022 call for grants for “Prueba de concepto” projects in the framework of the state program to promote scientific-technical research and its transfer (Ministry of Science and Innovation) was published. Our project “Un prototipo tecnológico para la redacción en lenguaje claro: incorporación en la Administración pública y análisis de su impacto en la ciudadanía” (arText_IMPACT) has been accepted and has obtained funding. We are very happy!
The Jornadas 50 Aniversario “Comunicación Intercultural, Mediación e Interacción en línea”, organized by the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of the Facultad de Filología of the UNED, took place on October 18th. It is in this department where the research on arText is currently being carried out.
The director of the department, M. Dolores Castrillo, gave us the opportunity to present the talk entitled: “ArText claro como herramienta de mediación en la comunicación entre la Administración y la ciudadanía”. The conference can be seen on Canal UNED. Specifically, the communication about arText claro can be seen here.
In order to celebrate the International Plain Language Day (October 13), we have created a video about arText claro, our assisted writer that helps to write administrative texts in plain language. We posted it on our Twitter account (@sistema_arText) and it was a big hit! It’s only one minute long, so we encourage you to watch it to discover what arText claro is and how it can help you to write clearer and more understandable administrative texts.
On October 13, in commemoration of International Plain Language Day, the training area of the Poder Judicial de la Provincia de Corrientes (Argentina) organized a conference at the Ateneo de Lenguaje Claro aimed at officers, magistrates and lawyers, and other people interested in the subject. At this event, Iria da Cunha presented arText claro with a talk entitled: “ArText. The first assisted writer for Spanish that helps to write texts in specialized fields and texts in clear language”. The event was held in dual format (onsite and online) and was a great success, with a participation of more than 300 attendees connected through the Internet.
The VII Congreso Internacional de Transparencia y Gobierno Abierto was held in Cartagena on September 28-30. It was organized by the Facultad de Ciencias de la Empresa of the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. One of the working groups of the congress was dedicated to “Lenguaje Transparente”. Its coordinator was Rafael Camacho. We participated in this working group with the talk entitled “Estructura y contenidos prototípicos de las resoluciones administrativas publicadas en portales web institucionales: una propuesta orientada al lenguaje claro”. In it, we commented on some of the results presented in this bibliographic reference:
Pistola, S.; da Cunha, I. (2022). «La resolución administrativa publicada en portales web institucionales: un análisis basado en corpus». Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante (ELUA) 38. ISSN 2171-6692
On 21-23 September, the IV Congreso Internacional de didáctica de la lengua: Las nuevas tecnologías en la enseñanza de la lengua y la literatura (CONDILE), organised by the Facultad de Educación of the Universidad de Salamanca, was held. The arText team participated with the presentation «Análisis de herramientas digitales de ayuda a la redacción de textos académicos en español» (Juan A. Núñez and Iria da Cunha).
The XXXVIII Congreso de la Sociedad Española para el Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (SEPLN) was held in A Coruña from the 20th to the 23rd of September. The research group Grupo LyS, from the Universidad de A Coruña, was in charge of the organisation of the event. As part of the main programme of the congress, Iria da Cunha presented arText claro with a talk entitled “Un redactor asistido para adaptar textos administrativos a lenguaje claro”.
In addition, the Simposio Doctoral en Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural de la Red PLN.NET was held within the framework of the congress. It was attended by Sara Pistola, whose doctoral thesis is associated with the TIC-eADMIN project, in which arText is currently being developed.
The 69th issue of the journal Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural, editted by the Sociedad Española para el Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (SEPLN) has been published. It includes the article entitled “Un redactor asistido para adaptar textos administrativos a lenguaje claro”. The aim of this work is to present the development of arText claro, the first assisted editor for Spanish that helps public administration staff to write in plain language the texts they send to citizens. Different Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools are integrated in the system, thanks to which it manages to detect in the texts written by users the linguistic features that interfere with the most common plain language recommendations.
The reference of the article is:
Da Cunha, Iria. (2022). “Un redactor asistido para adaptar textos administrativos a lenguaje claro”. Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural 69. 39-49. ISSN: 1989-7553.
The team of the TIC-eADMIN project, in which arText is currently being developed, met virtually to allow the international members to attend. These are Maite Taboada, from the Simon Fraser University, and Gerardo Sierra, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. From Spain, Juan A. Núñez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), and Iria da Cunha, M. Ángeles Escobar, Susana Viñuales and Sara Pistola (from UNED) also assisted.
On 23 July, an interview with Iria da Cunha was published in the newspaper El Progreso de Lugo. In it, she talks, among other things, about arText and arText claro.
The 38th issue of the journal Estudios de Lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante (ELUA) has been published. This issue is a monograph on “Los géneros digitales en la interfaz del trabajo de corpus y el análisis del discurso especializado” coordinated by Chelo Vargas-Sierra and José A. Sánchez-Fajardo. It includes the article entitled “La resolución administrativa publicada en portales web institucionales: Un análisis basado en corpus”. This work focuses on the analysis of a textual genre in the field of administration that is currently disseminated almost exclusively through digital media, the resolution published on institutional web portals. To this end, the resolutions published on the website of the Boletín Oficial del Ayuntamiento de Madrid (BOAM) are taken as the object of study, and a linguistic analysis is carried out at textual and lexical level of a corpus consisting of 20 texts. A qualitative analysis of the digital features of this textual genre is also carried out.
The reference of the article is:
Pistola, Sara; Da Cunha, Iria (2021). “La resolución administrativa publicada en portales web institucionales: Un análisis basado en corpus”. ELUA 38. 17-45. ISSN: 2171-6692
The coordinator of the project in which arText is developed, Iria da Cunha, has been appointed full member of the Academia Joven de España (AJE). In her acceptance speech, she states that she joins the General Board of this organisation, sponsored by the Government, with the aim of representing young scientists and promoting science as a career option. Specifically, she will work to raise awareness of applied linguistics, natural language processing and plain language. It also mentions arText.
More information can be found in these media: Agencia EFE, La Vanguardia, COPE and Yahoo noticias.
As finalists in the Premios Archiletras de la Lengua in the category”Premios a la investigación”, some of the members of the arText team attended the awards ceremony held at the Casa de América in Madrid on 14 July. Finally, the prize in our category went to Elena Álvarez Mellado, a colleague from the UNED. Congratulations!
We would like to congratulate all the winners and finalists of these awards. For our team, the nomination is already a success. It was also great to meet so many friends at the gala.
The XVI Jornada MEDES was held on 11 July as part of the summer courses of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. The Fundación Lilly was in charge of organising the event. This conference has been a great success in terms of attendance, and it has had a great repercussion in the media. Some of the media that have mentioned it are: Acta sanitaria, Infosalus, [im]médico and La Vanguardia.
We participated in the round table entitled “Descubribilidad o el arte de hacer visible el contenido científico multilingüe”. Many topics were discussed, including the use of plain language in the field of administration and in other fields such as medicine. We were also able to mention the possibilities offered by arText claro for writing texts in plain language. The entire event can be viewed on YouTube. In particular, the round table in which we participated is available here.
Horacio Saggion, member of the Natural Language Processing Research Group (TALN) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), invited us to present arText claro. The seminar was entitled: “A writing assistant to adapt administrative texts into plain language”.
On 30 June and 1 July, the international symposium “Sostenibilidad en el sector turístico: implementación y comunicación” was held in San Sebastián, organised by the Tecnun-Escuela de Ingeniería and the Instituto Cultura y Sociedad (ICS) of the Universidad de Navarra, within the framework of the project “KiNESIS: Alianzas de conocimiento para la innovación social ante la despoblación”. M. Ángeles Escobar, member of the arText team, presented the paper entitled “Applied linguistic technology and sustainable communication in Tourism” and showed the audience the arText tool that helps to write textual genres in the field of tourism in Spanish.
The arText system is one of the three finalists for the Premios Archiletras de la Lengua in the category “Premio a la investigación”, together with Elena Álvarez Mellado and the Biblioteca Virtual de la Filología Española. In total, among all categories, the jury has selected 36 finalists out of 152 nominations, so it is an honour for us to have made it this far. The winners will be announced at an event in Madrid on July 14th.
More information on the finalists and the composition of the jury can be found in this article on the Archiletras website.
The Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública (INAP) invited us to participate in the learning experience “Fundamentos de Gobierno Abierto” to talk about clear communication and to show the possibilities offered by arText claro to write administrative texts addressed to citizens in clear language. Specifically, we participated in the round table “Comunicación clara” together with Xavier Amatria, Estrella Montolío and Anabel Beltrán (moderator).
On 14 June, the Nordés Club Empresarial (A Coruña) invited us to give a talk on the applications of plain language in the business and administrative fields. The talk was entitled “Lenguaje claro: una estrategia comunicativa para crear valor en las empresas y en la Administración”. We also presented arText claro.
In addition, they interviewed the team’s coordinator, Iria da Cunha. The interview is available on their website.
The Universidad Nebrija invited Iria da Cunha to give a talk as part of the TEDxUNebrija event. The talk was entitled”¿Eres de letras o de ciencias? De las dos: soy lingüista computacional”. In the presentation, Iria introduced her academic career, explained the possibilities offered by computational linguistics, and mentioned arText claro as an example.
On May 13, the research group COMINTRAD, from the Universidad Pablo de Olvide, invited us to give a conference on “Lenguaje claro, corpus y tecnologías lingüísticas”. It has been a pleasure to meet the members of this group and to share academic experiences!
