Montserrat Bermúdez-Bausela, Iria da Cunha and Maite Taboada gave a talk on a panel on lexical variation at the LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística, held at the CSIC in Madrid. Their talk included progress from the EUPlainTech project (funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities).
Today our plain language course at UNED begins. Through this course, our students will obtain an Open Teaching Certificate equivalent to 10 ECTS credits. The course instructors are Susana Viñuales (director), Sara Pistola, and Iria da Cunha.
More information here.
Our colleague Jia Chen defended her doctoral dissertation on November 12, 2025, at the Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Congratulations!
The dissertation is titled “Writing in Spanish with Technology: A Study on the Use of arText by Chinese Students of Spanish as a Foreign Language”, and it was supervised by Juan Antonio Núñez and Iria da Cunha.
The dissertation received the highest grade, cum laude by unanimous decision. Many thanks to the examination committee for their valuable contributions to the research: Manuel Romero (Universidad de Cádiz), Beatriz Sedano (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), and M. Amor Montané (Universitat de Barcelona).
Our Chilean colleague Jadranka Gladic completed a short stay (November 3–7) with our arText team in Madrid, specifically in the Department of Foreign Philologies and Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology of UNED. The stay was funded thanks to an international mobility grant from Banco Santander for PhD candidates enrolled at UNED’s International Doctoral School. It was a very productive visit!
Today, the III International Seminar of the DILE research group, part of the Departamento de Filología Española at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, took place. Our colleague Juan Antonio Núñez presented the results of our experiments on reading comprehension and perceived clarity.
The Escola Balear d’Administració Pública (Govern de les Illes Balears) invited our colleague M. Amor Montané to deliver the workshop “Plain Language in the Legal Field.” It was a very productive six-hour session working with arText planer in Catalan:
https://sistema-artext.com/ca/
Laia Vidal has presented the paper “ous camins per al treball terminològic: llenguatge planer i IA en l’àmbit mèdic” at the XXI Xornada Científica REALITER “Terminoloxía e cambio social”, held at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.
M. Amor Montané and Iria da Cunha presented the paper “Redacción en lenguaje claro asistida por tecnología: retos en la construcción de un sistema multilingüe” at the XXI Xornada Científica REALITER “Terminoloxía e cambio social”, held at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. The session was chaired by Jordi Bover, director of Termcat.
Today, the “IX Jornada WEB del Portal Institucional madrid.es y sus unidades gestoras” was held, organized by the Dirección General de Atención a la Ciudadanía of the Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Iria da Cunha delivered a lecture on the arText project at the invitation of the organizers. It was fantastic to present the results of our collaboration protocol in scientific research on clear communication between UNED and the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, stemming from our previous Knowledge Generation project, TIC-eADMIN.
Iria da Cunha participated as a guest in the panel “La IA al servicio del lenguaje claro y la comunicación accesible” as part of the X Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española (CILE 2025) in Arequipa, Peru, organized by the Real Academia Española and the Instituto Cervantes. Her presentation was titled “Clasificación y análisis de las herramientas de inteligencia artificial aplicadas al lenguaje claro”. The panel also featured talks by Oswaldo Holguín, Manuel Tuero, Fernando Carvallo, Miguel Lorenzoni, and Katty Soler.
You can watch the panel here.
Our colleague Jadranka Gladic participated in the 1XV Congreso Internacional de Pedagogía Universitaria y Didáctica del Derecho, organized by the Facultad de Derecho of the Universidad de Chile. During the event, she presented some results from her doctoral research.
The Smart City Journal has published the results of the research on plain language carried out by our colleagues Sabela Fernández Silva and Juan Antonio Núñez Cortés within the framework of our Proof of Concept project arText_IMPACT. The article presenting the study is the following:
Fernández-Silva, Sabela; Núñez, Juan A. (2024). “Exploring the effect of plain terminology on processing and comprehension of administrative texts in Spanish: A self-paced reading experiment“. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 0:1–13.
Don’t miss it!
On June 26, Montserrat Bermúdez, Iria da Cunha, and Maite Taboada presented their paper “Choosing clear variants for English terms from the legal-administrative domain within the EU: A glossary proposal” at the 19th International Pragmatics Conference at The University of Queensland (Australia). Specifically, they participated in the panel “Choosing the best words for clear accessible communication,” organized by Cliff Goddard and Helen Bromhead. The paper includes the results of the project “Plain language and natural language processing in legal-administrative texts in English: the European Commission as a case study (EUPlainTech)” (PID2022-143092NB-I00), funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
Nova Ciencia has published a news item about our arText system. 🙂
Iria da Cunha and Amor Montané presented the Catalan version of the arText system in Barcelona. The event was attended by representatives from the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) and the Government of the Balearic Islands, co-funders of the project, as well as from the UNED Barcelona and Balearic Islands centers, the Institute for Catalan Studies, the Institute for Applied Linguistics, and Termcat, among others.
Access to the system: https://sistema-artext.com/ca/
More information on the UNED website and the Generalitat de Catalunya website.
Paloma Blasco participated as a speaker at the global science festival Pint of Science 2025 with the talk “La Administración habla, pero no la entiendo”. In her presentation, she discussed the progress of her doctoral dissertation, which involves compiling and analysing a corpus of 60 texts issued by the European Commission. Her research aims to systematise the prototypical linguistic features of these texts—particularly their sections, titles, and contents—and to clarify the representative phrases associated with each of those contents.
Here you have the reference of an article we have recently published, where we evaluate the arText claro system with the collaboration of the staff of the Madrid City Council, in the framework of our Proof of Concept project of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
Pistola, Sara; Da Cunha, Iria (2024). «El personal público como pieza imprescindible en la evaluación de la tecnología aplicada al lenguaje claro». Sphera Publica, 24(2). 116-145. ISSN 1576-4192
Issue 12 of the journal Archiletras Científica is a monograph entitled ‘Comunicación clara: Un campo emergente en investigación y transferencia en el mundo hispánico’. Estrella Montolío (director) and Mar Forment (coordinator) have invited us to participate with the following article:
Montané, M. Amor; Da Cunha, Iria; Pistola, Sara (2024). «Redacción asistida multilingüe en lenguaje claro mediante procesamiento del lenguaje natural: del español al catalán como caso de estudio». Archiletras Científica, 12. 79-94. ISSN 2659-8957
Thank you very much for the invitation! It has been a pleasure to participate in this volume.
The arText team would like to thank you for using the system and for helping us to spread the word. We would also like to encourage all those who have not yet tried it to do so. The system is available online for free through this link.
The Finnish Language Institute (Kotus) interviews Iria da Cunha about Artificial Intelligence and Plain Language in Spain. You can read the full article, written by Frida Ahonen, at this link.
Our book Lenguaje claro y tecnología en la Administración (Clear language and technology in the Administration), edited by Dr. Iria da Cunha and published by editorial Comares, is now available in open access. You can download it through this link.
Paloma Blasco has joined the arText team to carry out her PhD in the Doctoral Program in Philology at UNED. Her thesis deals with the topic of textual genres produced in the European Commission and is part of the EUPlainTech project. The thesis supervisor is María Ángeles Escobar, member of the arText team and full professor at UNED.
The 2023 edition of the INNOVADORASTIC book “Mujeres referentes del Siglo XXI” was presented today in Madrid. Iria da Cunha, one of the interviewees who appears in the publication as a leading scientist woman of the 21st century, participated in this event along with Marina Sánchez and Cynthia Gálvez. The three researchers talked about their respective work in the field of science and technology.
The UNED and the Sociedad Española de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria (semFYC) have signed this morning, at the semFYC headquarters in Barcelona, a General Protocol of Action that will help to advance in the development of the sistema arText in the field of medicine.
The event was attended by:
Both semFYC and UNED have published this news : semFYC press release / UNED press release.
The arText team will continue working on plain language and natural language processing thanks to the new Generación de Conocimiento project granted by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación e Universidades. The project is entitled “Plain language and natural language processing in legal-administrative texts in English: the European Commission as a case study (EUPlainTech)”.
Consult the resolution here.
The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) has become a member of the Red Panhispánica de Lenguaje Claro (Pan-Hispanic Plain Language Network), promoted by the Real Academia Española (RAE). On the occasion of this initiative, Iria da Cunha, director of the arText team at UNED, met with Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of this network, to discuss the projects on plain language and artificial intelligence that are being carried out by the arText team.
Yesterday we inaugurated the pre- and postdoctoral seminar of the arText team. This first seminar was given by Sabela Fernández-Silva, postdoctoral researcher María Zambrano at UNED. Sabela spoke to us about the “Ethical procedures for research with people at UNED”, with the aim of ensuring that the different studies comply with the rules of ethics and data protection.
Josep Villullas has joined the arText team (Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas at UNED) to work as a computer scientist and technologist in the arText_IMPACT “Prueba de Concepto” project (2022-2024), directed by Dr. Iria da Cunha and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
A new space on the sistema arText has been launched in the eScience data repository of the Consorcio Madroño. In this space you can find results of the TIC-eADMIN and arText_IMPACT projects which, at the same time, are part of the results of Sara Pistola’s doctoral thesis in progress, supervised by Dr. Iria da Cunha and Dr. Susana Viñuales.
The bibliographic references of the publications currently available are:
A review of our book “Lenguaje claro y tecnología en la Administración” (Iria da Cunha, Ed. 2022, Editorial Comares) has been published in issue 178 of the Punto y Coma bulletin of the European Union. The author of the review is Leire Segura (European Commission) and it is available here (p. 15-22). 
The UNED and the Academia Joven de España (AJE) have signed a collaboration agreement with the aim of promoting scientific dissemination. Specifically, research work, studies, publications and dissemination of results on topics of common interest will be carried out. The rector of the university, Ricardo Mairal; the president of the Academia Joven de España, Javier García Martínez; the vice-rector for Research, Knowledge Transfer and Scientific Dissemination of the UNED,Rosa María Martín Aranda, and the UNED professors and members of the AJE, Iria da Cunha Fanego, director of the arText team, and Borja Franco Llopis, will participate in the events to be held on the occasion of the agreement.
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.
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…🎉
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 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/
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, 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 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 article entitled “Una herramienta automática para el aprendizaje de los conectores discursivos” has been published in the journal Tejuelo. The aim of this article is to show the functionalities of the arText system that incorporate discourse information, such as connectors. The authors’ motivation is to help students to improve their use of connectors by reviewing their texts with the tool.
Article reference:
Da Cunha, Iria; Escobar, M. Ángeles (2022). “Una herramienta automática para el aprendizaje de los conectores discursivos”. Tejuelo, 35(2). 205-233. ISSN: 1988-8430
The arText system has exceeded 100,000 users! Many thanks to all of them for keeping the project growing nationally and internationally. 🙂
The article entitled “Recomendaciones sobre lenguaje claro en español en el ámbito jurídico-administrativo: análisis y clasificación” has been published today in the journal Pragmalingüística. The aim of the article is to analyse the recommendations on plain language written in Spanish that are included in the most relevant and current sources on the subject, in order to classify them according to the level of the language to which they refer. This systematization of the plain language recommendations was used as the basis for the creation of arText claro. We encourage you to read the article and use arText claro!
The reference of the article is as follows:
Da Cunha, Iria; Escobar, M. Ángeles (2021). “Recomendaciones sobre lenguaje claro en español en el ámbito jurídico-administrativo: análisis y clasificación”. Pragmalingüística, 29. 129-148. ISSN 1133-682X
The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Ayuntamiento de Madrid signed the “Protocolo de colaboración en investigación científica en materia de comunicación clara”. The document was signed by Rosa María Martín Aranda, Vicerrectora de Investigación, Transferencia del Conocimiento y Divulgación Científica of the UNED, and by Begoña Villacís Sánchez, in her capacity as head of the Área de Gobierno de Vicealcaldía of the Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Silvia Saavedra, concejala delegada de Coordinación Territorial, Transparencia y Participación Ciudadana, was present at the event.
The motivation of this collaboration is that the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, through the Subdirección General de Calidad y Evaluación, collaborates in the TIC-eADMIN research project. As part of this project, arText‘s new functionalities are being developed to help the Administration’s staff to write texts addressed to the citizens. Currently, arText claro has already been developed, a system that helps to write administrative texts addressed to citizens in plain language. However, thanks to the collaboration with the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, arText will also incorporate new functionalities that help public workers to write some specific types of texts, such as, for example, a requirement, a resolution or a contract. The aim is that the technological tool will not only offer recommendations on plain language, as it already does thanks to arText claro, but it will also help the users to structure and draft certain types of specific documents.
We have updated the infographic that explains how to use the arText system (and arText claro) in 6 easy steps.
The arText team participates in the 75th number of the Journal of Language and Law with two publications. The first one is the article “Una clasificación actualizada de los géneros textuales de la Administración pública española” (Sara Pistola and Susana Viñuales). It can be consulted here. The second is a review by Cristina Carretero of the book “El discurso del ámbito de la Administración: una perspectiva lingüística”, published by Iria da Cunha in 2020 (Editorial Comares). The review is entitled “El proceso comunicativo entre la Administración y la ciudadanía: especial perspectiva del ciudadano como emisor del mensaje” and can be consulted here.
On Monday 24th of May, arText claro, the new tool of the arText system that helps to write texts in plain language, was presented online. Currently, it helps to write in plain language the texts that the Public Administration staff addresses to the citizenship.
The presentation began with the interventions of two representatives of the UNED, M. Ángeles Escobar and Ricardo Mairal. Afterwards, the main researcher of the project in which arText claro has been developed, Iria da Cunha, showed a demo of the tool. After that, the guests Cristina Carretero, Julio Carlos Fuentes and Sheila Queralt presented their assessments of arText claro. The event was moderated by Susana Viñuales.
The event was broadcasted live on Canal UNED and attendees from several countries were connected. The recording is currently available on Canal UNED.
Europe Direct Comunitat Valenciana, the Representación en España of the European Commission and Europe Direct Sevilla disseminated the presentation.
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:
The arText system has just been updated. Now, in addition to helping to write textual genres in specialized fields, it incorporates a new tool, called arText claro, which helps to write in clear language the texts that the Administration addresses to the citizens.
Try the new arText claro tool here.
The blog of the journal Llengua i Dret has published a post on the book “El discurso del ámbito de la Administración: una perspectiva lingüística”, by Iria da Cunha and with a foreword by M. Teresa Cabré, in which the arText system is also mentioned. You can read it here.
The arText system has exceeded 50,000 users! Many thanks to all of them for keeping the project growing. 🙂