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:

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.

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 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.

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 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!

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.

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:

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.

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 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 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 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!

On May 10 and 11, the colloquium Lenguaje claro y cultura de la legalidad. Estudios interdisciplinarios took place. It was organized by the Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Estudios Latinoamericanos (IELAT) of the Universidad de Alcalá and the Programa Interuniversitario en Cultura de la Legalidad. We participated with a talk entitled “Lenguaje claro y tecnología: una sinergia beneficiosa para la Administración pública”. Congratulations to all the speakers and the organisers!

On May 6th  we took part in the XXVII Jornadas de Fomento de la Investigación en Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, organised by the Departamento de Traducción y Comunicación at Universidad Jaume I. Iria da Cunha gave a talk entitled “Escribe tus trabajos académicos en lenguaje claro”. Many thanks to the organisers for the invitation!

On April 30, the Seminario interno 2022-2 of the Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística (GIL), Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) was held. We were invited to present arText, with a talk entitled “Una herramienta tecnológica de ayuda a la redacción de géneros textuales de ámbitos especializados y de textos en lenguaje claro: el sistema arText”. It was streamed on Facebook live (@ingenieriaLinguistica). Now, you can watch the video here.

The Instituto de Idiomas of the Universidad del Norte (Colombia) has celebrated the Semana del Idioma. The organisers invited us to present arText and arText claro as part of the activity “Tecnologías para potenciar el lenguaje”. It was a pleasure to participate! 🙂

The 4th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education (WORLDTE) was held between March 18-20. It took place in Prague (Czech Republic) thanks to the organization of Acavent.

M. Ángeles Escobar, member of the arText team, gave two presentations: “Connectors in L2 English Writing: A Case Study” and “Teaching Discourse Connectors in Tourism Studies”. In both talks, she mentioned the recommendations related to connectors offered by the arText system for Spanish.

Sheila Queralt, director of the Laboratorio SQ, invited us to give a seminar organized by the Departamento de I+D+i en Lingüística Forense. The title of the talk was: “Análisis y clasificación de recomendaciones sobre lenguaje claro en español en el ámbito jurídico-administrativo”. Thank you very much for the invitation!

For more information about the topic of the talk, you can consult this article published by Iria da Cunha and M. Ángeles Escobar in the journal Pragmalingüística (issue 29).

The Workshop “La escritura del TFG y del TFM en Educación”,  organized by the Centro de Escritura of the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, coordinated by Juan A. Núñez, took place from 17th – 21st January. We gave the opening presentation entitled “Escritura y contenidos prototípicos de un TFG y un TFM”. During the talk, we mentioned the arText tool for writing the TFG. The tool shows the user the prototypical structure, contents and phraseology of this type of academic work.

On 10 December, the Jornadas Terminología, inteligencia artificial y sociedad digital were held in Madrid, combining, on the one hand, the XX Jornada anual de la Asociación Española de Terminología (AETER) and, on the other hand, the IX Jornada de Terminología y Traducción Institucional de la Dirección General de Traducción (DGT) de la Comisión Europea. Iria da Cunha participated in the round table “Terminology and digital society”, moderated by Luis González (DGT translator). Among other things, she presented arText as an example of a technological tool that makes use of terminology and has a transfer to society.

The event was streamed live on the European Commission’s YouTube channel and is available here. You can also access the photo gallery from the AETER website by clicking here.

The Red de Lenguaje Claro Colombia invited our coordinator Iria da Cunha to present arText at one of the round tables of the IV Seminario internacional de lenguaje claro, which took place on the 1st and 2nd of December. The round table was entitled “Midiendo la claridad: testeo de contenidos y diálogo de saberes”. Iria da Cunha was joined by Mario Tascón (Prodigioso Volcán) and Carlos Andrés Rocha Ruiz (Grupo de Modernización del Estado del Departamento Nacional de Planeación de Colombia). The round table was moderated by Juan Manuel Espinosa, Subdirector Académico of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo de Colombia.

The seminar was streamed and proved to be a great success, with more than 950 attendees. It is now available on YouTube.

On 26 November, the II Jornadas de la Red Nacional de Calidad Normativa were held, organised by the Oficina de Coordinación y Calidad Normativa of the Ministerio de la Presidencia, Relaciones con las Cortes y Memoria Democrática of Spain. We participated with a talk entitled “El sistema arText como recurso tecnológico para la redacción de normas en lenguaje claro”. Thank you very much for the invitation!

The Consejería de Transparencia, Participación y Administración Pública and the Escuela de Formación e Innovación Pública de la Administración Pública (EFIAP) of the Región de Murcia, with the collaboration of Fundación NovaGob, organized the Jornada “La tecnología al servicio del lenguaje claro en la Administración”. It was celebrated on 15 November in a dual format. In total, more than 100 people attended.

We participated to present arText claro with a conference entitled “Redacción asistida de textos administrativos en lenguaje claro: el caso del sistema arText”. The event is available to watch on YouTube here.

On Wednesday 3 November we participated in a conference organized by the Programa de Posgrado en Lingüística of the Universidad de Costa Rica by invitation of its director, Adrián Vergara Heidke. The presentation was entitled: “Una herramienta para la redacción asistida de textos administrativos dirigidos a la ciudadanía: arText claro”.

From 26 to 29 October, the XVII Simposio Iberoamericano de Terminología (RITerm 2020-2021) was celebrated. This year’s theme was: “Inclusión y terminología en la sociedad actual”. The event was held online from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with Gerardo Sierra (Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística, UNAM) as the president of the organizing committee.

We participated with the communication entitled “Latinismos y expresiones arcaicas en el ámbito de la Administración: hacia la búsqueda de alternativas más claras”. In it, we explained the process that we followed to implement the recommendation “Sustitución de expresiones difíciles de entender” in arText claro. 

On 28 and 29 October, the Congreso NovaGob 2021: VIII Congreso de Innovación Pública was held. It was organized by Fundación NovaGob with the participation of Gobierno de Aragón, Fundación Democracia y Gobierno Local, and Laboratorio de Aragón Gobierno Abierto (LAAB). We participated in the “Desafíos en 10 minutos” with a communication entitled “ArText claro contra el muro del lenguaje administrativo”. It was recorded and can be watched here.

From 4 to 8 October, the 3rd edition of the Encuentros sobre lenguaje claro “EnClaro” was held, organized by Antonio Martín (Cálamo y Cran) and Arsenio Escolar (Archiletras), and directed by Isabel Espuelas.

Iria da Cunha was in charge of opening the event with a talk entitled “Lenguaje claro y tecnología: el caso de arText claro”. She also participated in the round table that took place on 8 October together with Víctor González (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and Romina Sparano (Language Compass). The topic of the round table was “Cómo poner en marcha un plan de claridad”.

On 27-29 September, the VI Congreso Internacional de Transparencia was held at the University of Alicante. We participated in the Grupo de Trabajo GT21-02 Lenguaje transparente, coordinated by Rafael Camacho Muñoz.

The presentation was entitled “El primer redactor asistido para escribir en lenguaje claro textos administrativos en español”. It included an online demonstration of arText claro, the arText tool that helps to write texts in plain language.

The Seminario Internacional sobre Centros de Escritura en Universidades Españolas was held on 20-21 September. It was organized by the Proyecto de Innovación Educativa PIE 19-098 of the Universidad de Málaga (UMA), and the Centro de Escritura de la Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), coordinated by Juan Antonio Núñez.

The paper we presented was entitled: “ArText como recurso tecnológico de acompañamiento en las tutorías de escritura académica”. In it, we talked about the role that the arText system can play as a resource to help students and teachers in academic writing tutorships.

On 14-15 June, the IV Jornadas Internacionales de Transversalidad en la Docencia were held at Universidad Nebrija. We presented a communication entitled “Un redactor asistido para la elaboración del Trabajo de Fin de Grado”, related to the arText tool that helps to write the TFG.

The communication team of Nebrija University has prepared a news item about the conference. You can read it here.

On 3 June, the round table “PLN para solucionar problemas sociales” was held. It was organised by DiverTLes, a community of women working and researching in Language Technologies in Spain created by the “Red de Dinamización de Actividades en Tecnologías de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural” (PLN.NET).

Iria da Cunha participated with a presentation entitled “ArText: un redactor asistido que tiene en cuenta las necesidades de diferentes colectivos sociales”. The event was recorded and it is available on YouTube.

Mikel Iruskieta (Universidad del País Vasco) and Juliano Desiderato Antonio (Universidade Estadual de Maringá) have invited us to participate in the Symposium “Rhetorical Structure Theory: a discoursive perspective for linguistic analysis and applied linguistics”. This Symposium is part of the II Seminar “Caminhos para a pesquisa em Descrição Linguística”, organised by the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Mestrado e Doutorado, Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Brazil).

Our talk was entitled “Discourse-related recommendations in a computer assisted writing system”. We have shown the design and computational implementation of the discourse-related recommendations included in arText.

Ricardo Jiménez Yáñez, lecturer at UIC Barcelona, invited us to participate in the II Jornadas de Lenguaje Jurídico “Rebus Sic Stantibus”, which took place on the 27th and 28th of May. Iria da Cunha presented a conference in which she showed a series of resources and tools for writing legal texts in plain language, including arText claro. The recording is available here.

On 18 May, the Jornada de Proyectos de Investigación I+D+i de lengua, lingüística y literatura organised by the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas, Facultad de Filología, at UNED was held. The conference was created with the aim of giving visibility to the funded research projects that are being carried out in the departament, among them, the TIC-eADMIN project, in which arText is currently being developed.

Three members of the TIC-eADMIN project team took part in the conference: Iria da Cunha, Gerardo Sierra and Maite Taboada. The recordings of the presentations are available on Canal UNED:

• “El proyecto TIC-eADMIN: la tecnología como recurso para favorecer la comunicación entre Administración y ciudadanía a través del lenguaje claro” – Iria da Cunha

• “ArText, un proyecto integral de ingeniería lingüística” – Gerardo Sierra

• “Natural Language processing to manage harmful content online” – Maite Taboada

Esther Monzó, professor in the Departamento de Traducción y Comunicación at the Universitat Jaume I, invited us to give a conference-workshop at the XXVI Jornadas de Fomento de la Investigación en Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, which took place on May 14th. The conference was entitled “La dirección a distancia de los trabajos académicos en ciencias humanas y sociales: herramientas, recursos y materiales para profesorado y alumnado”.

More information on the conference can be found in this article.

On 11-13 May, took place the XI Jornadas de Investigación en Innovación Docente de la UNED. This year, the theme of the sessions was “Avances en la formación híbrida y en línea para una educación post-pandemia”. Silvia Sánchez Calderón and Iria da Cunha participated in the event with a talk entitled “El MOOC como herramienta de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la elaboración de un Trabajo de Fin de Grado”. This work was carried out in the framework of the Innovative Didactic Group for Open Linguistic Glosary Applications (OLGA).

In the communication, they talked about the MOOC “La redacción del Trabajo de Fin de Grado en seis pasos”, whose 2nd edition starts in November 2021. In this MOOC, different materials are employed, such as the book “El trabajo de fin de grado y de máster: Redacción, defensa y publicación” (Iria da Cunha). In addition, the arText tool for writing the TFG is recommended to university students.

The communication can be seen on Canal UNED:

On May 13 and 14, the III Congreso Internacional enTRetextos: Géneros discursivos, corpus y traducción en contextos profesionales y académicos. Desafíos y oportunidades en la era digital took place. Sara Pistola and Iria da Cunha participated with the talk entitled “Los géneros textuales de la Administración en el contexto universitario: el punto de vista de los estudiantes del ámbito jurídico”.

The communication presented the results of a survey carried out among students of Administrative Law at the UNED. The aim of the survey was to determine the administrative textual genres that students have to write more frequently and which ones generate the most writing difficulties for them.

The recording is available on YouTube.

On 16, 22 and 30 April 2021, it was held the I Seminario Internacional Interuniversitario de Lectura y Escritura en la Universidad “La escritura académica”, organised by the Red Internacional de Universidades Lectoras (RIUL), the Universidad de Extremadura, the Universidad de Jaén and the Universidad de León. Iria da Cunha participated in the seminar with a talk entitled “El sistema arText como recurso para la redacción en línea de textos profesionales y académicos”.