Our colleague Susana Viñuales took part in the Cuatroochenta‘s podcast Cuidado con las macros ocultas, alongside María Moya (CEO and co-founder of Prodigioso Volcán), at the invitation of journalist Bárbara Villuendas. They spoke about clear communication, plain language, administrative language and artificial intelligence. Don’t miss it!
Talk at the LIV Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística
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).
New UNED course on plain language
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.
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!
Conference at the Tribunal de Cuentas
The Tribunal de Cuentas invited Iria da Cunha to speak about artificial intelligence and plain language, and to showcase arText, to young professionals in external auditing. It was a fabulous day!
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.
Juan Antonio Núñez’s lecture at the UAM
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.
Panel on clear communication at the NovaGob 2025 conference
Iria da Cunha coordinated the panel “Clear Communication: The Challenge of Connecting with Society” at the 2025 Public Innovation Conference, organized by the NovaGob Foundation. The session featured outstanding speakers who presented the clear communication projects currently being implemented in their respective institutions.
Course at the Escola Balear d’Administració Pública
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/
Presentation by Laia Vidal at REALITER 2025
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.
Presentation by M. Amor Montané and Iria da Cunha at REALITER 2025
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.
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.
Presentation at the XV Congreso Internacional de Pedagogía Universitaria y Didáctica del Derecho
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.
Interview in the Boletín Lenguaje Claro of the Poder Judicial of Chile
The Plain Language Commission of the Poder Judicial of Chile has released the second edition of its bulletin, devoted to exploring the role of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting accessible language. This issue includes an interview with Iria da Cunha about arText.
More information 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.
The arText system in Nova Ciencia
Nova Ciencia has published a news item about our arText system. 🙂
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 in The Conversation
Don’t miss this article about plain language and artificial intelligence in The Conversation! 🙂
Paloma Blasco participates in the Pint of Science event
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.
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
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.
New publication on language teaching-learning and ICTs
“La enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lengua y la literatura a través de las TIC’ (Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca) has just been published. The publication includes a chapter by Juan Antonio Núñez and Iria Da Cunha (arText team) on digital tools to help writing academic texts in Spanish. You can read the chapter and the full publication through this link.
ArText system exceeds 300,000 users
We are celebrating! Sistema arText has already exceeded 300,000 users.
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.
Eleventh arText Team Seminar (2023-2024)
M. Betulia Pedraza, member of the Neolocyt group at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, in the framework of the arText team’s research seminars, presented two products derived from her doctoral thesis to improve communication between the Administration and citizens: CorpusPAP and DiPAP.
Thank you, María Betulia, for agreeing to share your knowledge of lexicography and plain language with the arText team!
The Sistema arText at the Finnish Language Institute (Kotus)
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.
Jenny Azarian presents at the XV Seminario del Programa de Doctorado en Filología of the UNED
Jenny Azarian, predoctoral researcher of the arText team, has participated in the XV Seminario de Investigación del Programa de Doctorado en Filología de la UNED, which took place on April 18-20. Jenny presented the progress of her thesis in a chat entitled “Análisis del impacto del software arText claro en la comprensión y la percepción de claridad de textos administrativos”.
Iria da Cunha participates in the II Congreso de Traducción y Sostenibilidad Cultural (Salamanca)
Iria da Cunha (arText team, UNED) participated as a guest speaker in the II Congreso Internacional de Traducción y Sostenibilidad Cultural, organized by the Departamento de Traducción e Interpretación of the Universidad de Salamanca on April 17, 18 and 19, 2024. She participated in the round table “Didáctica de la traducción y la interpretación y globalización lingüística y tecnológica”, together with Michaela Albl-Mikasa (ZHAW, Zurich University of Applied Sciences) and Astrid Schmidhofe (Universität Innsbruck).
Click here to see the full conference program.
NINTH ARTEXT TEAM SEMINAR (2023-2024)
On April 5th, as part of the arText team‘s current academic year pre- and post-doctoral seminar, Eric Martínez, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT), presented “Even Laypeople Use Legalese”.
Thank you, Eric Martínez, for such a motivating talk on legal discourse and plain language!
Eighth artext team seminar (2023-2024)
Mari Carmen Suárez de Figueroa (Ontology Engineering Group de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) participated as an external guest speaker in the eighth pre- and post-doctoral seminar of the current academic year of the arText team. Dr. Suárez de Figueroa spoke about Easy Reading, Cognitive Accessibility and Inclusive Artificial Intelligence”.
Thank you very much, Mari Carmen, for sharing your knowledge with the arText team!
More additions to the arText team
Dra. Silvia Sánchez Calderón, Lecturer at the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of the Facultad de Filología at UNED, has joined the arText team. Specifically, Dr. Sánchez Calderón will be part of the research team of the EUPlainTech project. Welcome, Silvia!
New addition to the arText team
Dr. Montserrat Bermúdez, lecturer at the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas of the Facultad de Filología at UNED, has joined the arText team o be part of the research team of the EUPlainTech project. It will be a pleasure to have you in our team, Montserrat!
“Lenguaje claro y tecnología en la Administración”, now in open access
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.
New publication from the arText team (I)
Jadranka Gladic and Iria da Cunha have published a book chapter in the monograph Innovación docente y renovación pedagógica en Derecho (Dykinson publishing house). You can read the complete chapter here.
New addition to the arText Team
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.
Fifth artext team seminar (2023-2024)
In the fifth pre- and postdoctoral arText team seminar of the current academic year, Marc Bayés, external collaborator of the EDAP group and professor at the Universidad de Barcelona, spoke about the test of perception of clarity of an administrative text. The work he presented is related to his PhD thesis, directed by Estrella Montolío and María Ángeles García.
Thank you very much, Marc Bayés, for such an inspiring talk!
Jadranka Gladic and Iria da Cunha present at Nodos del Conocimiento
Jadranka Gladic and Iria da Cunha have presented their work on the difficulties of compiling a corpus of TFG on Administrative Law in Spain and Chile at the Nodos del Conocimiento conference. You can watch the talk below:
Sara Pistola and Susana Viñuales participate in ALES 2023
ArText team researchers Sara Pistola and Susana Viñuales participated in the IV International Conference ALES 2023, organized by the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (Chile). The speakers talked about the analysis of administrative texts and their writing at the university. You can see the complete program of the conference 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.
Interview with Iria da Cunha in the newspaper “ojo” (Peru)
Yesterday, an interview with Iria da Cunha by Martín Cuesta was published in the newspaper ojo (Lima, Peru). In the interview, Iria talks about clear language and arText claro, and highlights the importance of writing texts addressed to citizens in simple language so that citizens can understand the specialized message and thus exercise their rights. You can read the full interview here.
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.
Fourth arText team seminar (2023-2024)
In the fourth research seminar of the arText team, the researchers of the team have shared the progress of their projects. Moreover, Jadranka Gladic has made some interesting proposals of journals and conferences for the scientific dissemination of the research carried out in the arText team.
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.
