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!

More info here and here.

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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:

• Dr. Remedios Martín, president of the semFYC.
• Dr. Rosa María Martín, Vicerrectora de Investigación at the UNED.
• Dr. Iria da Cunha, director of the arText team.
• Dr. Laia Vidal Sabanés, Margarita Salas postdoctoral researcher and member of the arText research team.

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:

• Sara Pistola Grille; Iria Da Cunha Fanego; Susana Viñuales Ferreiro, 2023, “Fichas con información lingüística sobre 5 géneros textuales del ámbito de la Administración”, https://doi.org/10.21950/ZHXH9G, e-cienciaDatos, V1
• Sara Pistola Grille; Iria Da Cunha Fanego; Susana Viñuales Ferreiro, 2023, “Materiales para la evaluación de arText por parte de estudiantes universitarios de derecho”, https://doi.org/10.21950/V45AMM, e-cienciaDatos, V1
• Sara Pistola Grille; Iria Da Cunha Fanego; Susana Viñuales Ferreiro, 2023, “Adaptación a lenguaje claro de fraseología administrativa”, https://doi.org/10.21950/ZF2KRC, e-cienciaDatos, V1

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:

• Information and Communication Technologies for the e-Administration: towards the improvement of the communication between Administration and citizenship by means of plain language [TIC-eADMIN] (PGC2018-099694-A-I00)
• A technological prototype for writing in plain language: incorporation in public administration and analysis of its impact on citizens (arText_IMPACT) (PDC2022-133935-I00)

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 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.

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.

We have designed an infographic explaining how to use the arText system in 6 easy steps.

You can download the interactive PDF here.

We have prepared a short demo of arText (2 minutes), which explains the main functionalities of the system.

The video gives the example of the administrative text “letter of complaint”, but the guidelines are valid for all the texts included in arText.