Defense of Jia Chen’s Doctoral Thesis

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).

Predoctoral stay of Jadranka Gladic

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.

Interview in Don de Lenguas

The radio program of the Departamento de Traducción e Interpretación at the Facultad de Traducción y Documentación of the Universidad de Salamanca, Don de Lenguas, has interviewed Iria da Cunha after the course “El derecho a entender”. organized at the university by the Consejo General del Poder Judicial.

You can listen to the podcast here.

More information is available here.

Conference at the Ayuntamiento de Madrid

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.

Conference at CILE 2025

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.

Participation in the II Convención de la Red Panhispánica de Lenguaje Claro y Accesible of the RAE in Lima

The Real Academia Española (RAE) invited Iria da Cunha to participate as a speaker in the panel “La inteligencia artificial: oportunidad y desafío para el lenguaje claro” at the II Convención de la Red Panhispánica de Lenguaje Claro y Accesible of the RAE in Lima (Peru). The presentation was titled “Lenguaje claro e inteligencia artificial: aproximaciones metodológicas a la evaluación de herramientas”.

You can watch the full panel here and see the program here.

Conference at Ayuntamiento de Valencia

The Ayuntamiento de Valencia has joined the initiatives on plain communication. Today it held a very fruitful event titled “Comunicación clara, administración eficaz. IA y otras herramientas”. The guest speakers were Cristina Pérez Galán, Xosé Castro, and Iria da Cunha. Iria’s talk was titled “Presentación de herramientas de inteligencia artificial aplicables al lenguaje claro en el ámbito administrativo”.

Participation in the “El derecho a entender” course, organized by the Consejo General del Poder Judicial

The course “El derecho a entender” was held at the Universidad de Salamanca. It was aimed at judges and magistrates and organized by the Escuela Judicial of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial of Spain. The invited speakers included magistrates, linguists, translators, and psychologists, all sharing a common goal: to communicate more effectively with citizens. Iria da Cunha delivered the lecture “Lenguaje jurídico claro e inteligencia artificial”. She also led the workshop “Herramientas y recursos para la redacción asistida en lenguaje jurídico claro”, where judges and magistrates clarified their own texts using technological tools.

 

News about our research in The Smart City Journal

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!

Talk at the 19th International Pragmatics Conference (Australia)

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.

Official launch of arText in Catalan

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.

Article published in Logos

The following article has just been published, which includes some results of Sara Pistola’s thesis, defended in July 2024 at the UNED, and co-directed by Iria da Cunha and Susana Viñuales.

Pistola, Sara; Da Cunha, Iria (2024). «Análisis y clarificación de un corpus de fraseología administrativa: una propuesta orientada al uso del lenguaje claro en la Administración española». Logos: Revista de Lingüística, Filosofía y Literatura, 34(2). 494-522. ISSN 0719-3262

SCImago Journal & Country Rank

Article published in Sphera Publica

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

Article published in Archiletras Científica

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.

ArText team participates in II Congreso Internacional COMCLARA

The arText team has participated with two communications in the II Congreso Internacional de Comunicación Clara (COMCLARA), organised by Ricardo Vizcaino-Laorga and Blas-José Subiela-Hernández, and by the Universidad Católica de Murcia, the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, the Universidad Pontífica de Salamanca and the Estudios del Discurso Académico y Profesional group, EDAP, of the Universidad de Barcelona:

  • Sara Pistola and Iria da Cunha presented “El personal de la Administración como pieza fundamental en la evaluación de la tecnología aplicada al lenguaje claro”.
  • Laia Vidal-Sabanés and Iria da Cunha presented “Lenguaje claro e inteligencia artificial aplicados a la terminología médica”.

You can see the full conference programme here.

Inauguration of the UAM’s TFG and TFM writing workshop

Iria da Cunha, once again this year, participated in the inauguration of the workshop “La escritura del Trabajo Final de Grado y Trabajo Final de Máster en Educación”, organized by the Centro de Escritura and the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación.

¡Thank you, Jesús Manso (dean), Marta Ferrero (research vice-dean) and Juan Antonio Núñez (coordinator of the Centro de Escritura and member of the arText team), for the invitation!

You can see the program here.

UNAM

Sara Pistola presents at the Encuentro Virtual de Estudiantes de Doctorados en Lingüística

Sara Pistola, FPI predoctoral researcher at the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas de la UNED, presented “Los géneros textuales del ámbito de la Administración en España: análisis de corpus y escritura mediante el uso de la tecnología” at the Encuentro Virtual de Estudiantes de Doctorados en Lingüística of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). In this event Sara has shared the progress of her thesis with other PhD students.

SARA_doclingPUCV

Presentation of the publication “Mujeres referentes del siglo XXI”

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.

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Participation of the arText team in the II Jornadas de Filologías Extranjeras Comunicación Intercultural, Mediación e Interacción en Línea

M. Ángeles Escobar and Sara Pistola participated in the II Jornadas de Filologías Extranjeras: Comunicación Intercultural, Mediación e Interacción en Línea, organized by the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus lingüísticas of the Facultad de Filología at UNED. They presented the talk “La mediación a través del lenguaje claro en español y en inglés”, in which she also explained the new project EUPlainTech of the arText team.

You can see the video of the presentation in this link.

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ArText team participates in the COMCLARA congress

On November 9th and 10th took place the I Congreso Internacional de Comunicación Clara -COMCLARA. Several members of the arText team participated in this congress:

  • Iria da Cunha took part in the round table on Clear Communication in specialized languages, with the talk “Redacción asistida en lenguaje claro de géneros textuales de ámbitos especializados”.
  • Sara Pistola and Susana Viñuales presented “Una propuesta para implementar el lenguaje claro en la enseñanza universitaria del derecho administrativo”, within the panel on Specialized languages and clear communication.
  • Laia Vidal-Sabanés presented “La infografía terminológica al servicio del paciente: una propuesta que favorece la comprensión de los tratamientos del cáncer de mama”, within the panel on Design, technology and clear communication.

You can see the program of the congress in this link.

comclara

Protocol signed between UNED and semFYC

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.

UNED-SEMFYC1

Sara Pistola gives a seminar at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Yesterday Sara Pistola gave the seminar “Hacia la escritura de textos jurídicos-administrativos más claros mediante el uso de la tecnología” at the Propedéutico program of the Facultad y Escuela de Derecho de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). The seminar was organized by Carlos Figueroa, A. Paola Duarte and Jadranka Gladic.

Thank you for the invitation!

propedéutico

Second arText team seminar (2023-2024)

In the second session of the pre- and post-doctoral seminar of the arText team, we invited two external specialists, who talked about the work in clear communication in the field of administration that is carried out in the Generalitat de Catalunya:

Thanks a lot for accepting our invitation! 🙂

Gobierno_Cataluña

New project of the arText team: EUPlainTech

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.

proyecto_2023

UNED has become a member of the Red Panhispánica de Lenguaje Claro

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.

UNED-RAE-LENGUAJECLARO

We participate in PLAIN 2023

Iria da Cunha presented the sistema arText at the PLAIN 2023 International Conference, which this year took place at the Law School of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) on September 27, 28 and 29 and it was organized by the Observatorio de Lenguaje Claro of the Law School at the UBA and the Plain Language Association International (PLAIN). Specifically, Iria participated, along with other specialists, in the panel “Artificial intelligence as a tool to clarify language” and her presentation was entitled “Assisted writing in plain language using natural language processing techniques: the arText system”.

iria_PLAIN

arText team at CIT2023

Yesterday, Sara Pistola and Iria da Cunha participated in the Working Group on Plain Language at the VIII International Congress on Transparency and Open Government (CIT2023), which took place in Alcalá de Henares. Sara Pistola presented the paper entitled “Los textos que la Administración dirige a la ciudadanía: el caso del Ayuntamiento de Madrid”, which is part of the arText_IMPACT project. You can read the summary of the paper here.

sara_CIT

Publication “Lingüistas de hoy. Profesiones para el siglo XXI”

Iria da Cunha has participated in the book Lingüistas de hoy. Profesiones para el siglo XXI, coordinated by Dr. Sheila Queralt and published by Editorial Síntesis. In this publication, 36 linguists talk about their specialty and highlight the available professional opportunities. One of these disciplines is computational linguistics, which Iria da Cunha explains and exemplifies with the creation of the sistema arText. You can see the table of contents and read a sample chapter of the book here.

SHEILA1SHEILA2

New publication in Íkala journal

A new issue of Íkala journal has just been published, in which Sara Pistola and Iria da Cunha identify the most frequent and difficult administrative texts to write for the staff of the Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Madrid City Council) and Facultad de Derecho (Law School) at UNED. The article can be read here.

The reference of the article is:

Pistola, Sara y Da Cunha, Iria. (2023). Escritura de géneros textuales administrativos en el contexto académico y profesional español. Íkala, Revista De Lenguaje Y Cultura, 28(3), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.348531.

íkala