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 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, 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 (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.
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
Thank you very much, Marc Bayés, for such an inspiring talk!
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:
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
The 2023 edition of the INNOVADORASTIC program publication “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.
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.
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:
You can see the program of the congress in this link.
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.
Paulina Yepes (Universidad EAFIT de Medellín) has given the third arText team research seminar as an external guest. In this seminar, entitled “El lenguaje claro desde la mirada del comprensor”, she explained the work she carried out in her doctoral thesis on plain language and eye tracking.
Congratulations, Paulina! 🙂
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!
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! 🙂
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.
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”. The full conference program can be read here.
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.
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.
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.
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:
On August 17, Iria da Cunha gave a conference on arText claro at the Instituto de Ingeniería at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) as part of the internal seminars of the Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística. The conference, entitled “The arText claro system: from research to transfer and dissemination”, can be viewed at this link.
Iria da Cunha appears in the 2023 edition of the INNOVADORASTIC Mujeres referentes del Siglo XXI (Women of the 21st Century) publication as the creator of the sistema arText. This program aims to make visible stories of women of the 21st century who stand out for their work in the field of science and technology. You can find the interview with Iria on pages 88-95 of the publication, which can be downloaded through this link.
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). 
Yesterday, Jenny Azarian, member of the arText team and student of the PhD program in Philology at UNED, gave a seminar entitled “Evaluation of the impact of the use of arText claro on the comprehension and perception of clarity of texts by vulnerable groups” as part of the pre- and post-doctoral seminars of the arText team. In this forum, Jenny Azarian contextualized her research, which is part of the arText_IMPACT project, and presented the objectives, methodology and ongoing work she is carrying out.
M. Ángeles Escobar, lecturer of the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas at UNED and member of the arText team, participated in the 5th Eduling Biannual Meeting: “Grammar teaching and Learning: challenges and opportunities”, which was held last week at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. The work presented was entitled “A Case Study of Connectors in ESP though a RST grammar as implemented in arText” and you can read the abstract here.
Laia Vidal-Sabanés, postdoctoral researcher Margarita Salas UPF-UNED of the arText team, gave yesterday the seminar “Towards the incorporation of medical plain language in arText claro”, in the framework of the pre- and postdoctoral research seminars of the arText team. Laia Vidal-Sabanés presented the objectives, the methodology and the first advances of her postdoctoral project, which aims to incorporate the medical field in arText claro.
Susana Viñuales, member of the arText team, has participated in the Ciclo “Lenguaje Claro en Español”, organized by the IFPyGP and the Secretaría Legal y Técnica del Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. This cycle of seminars consists of 11 meetings in which specialists in the plain language field present a topic related to this subject. Susana participated in the third meeting, entitled “Plain Language and Artificial Intelligence. The arText experience“, which was attended by more than 180 people.
Elena Sevillano’s article published in the newspaper El País highlights the resurgence of Humanities degrees, which are increasingly allied with other disciplines such as, for example, Computer Science. As an example of this synergy, in the article, the author dedicates a space to talk about Iria da Cunha and her work as a computational linguist, as well as the arText project that she coordinates, pioneer in our country.
You can read the full article at this link.
Dr. José Osvaldo Ledesma, Justice of the Peace of Berón de Astrada, has been using artificial intelligence (AI), specifically the sistema arText, for a year to ensure clear writing in the drafting of his sentences. This news has been highlighted in several media: Diario Época, Misiones Online, News ES Euro, Radio Dos, Errepar + and Economis.
Several members of the arText team participated in the 3rd International Conference on Innovation in Teaching and Research in the Social and Legal Sciences (INNDOC2023), which took place on July 8 and 9 in virtual format.
On the one hand, Sara Pistola and Susana Viñueales have presented the communication “Use of an assisted editor for writing administrative texts: a proposal for the preparation of the Final Degree Project (TFG)”. In this work, Sara and Susana have presented a TFG proposal that incorporates a writing administrative texts task using the sistema arText. You can read the abstract and watch the presentation in this link.
On the other hand, Jadranka Gladic and Iria da Cunha presented the communication “A characterization of the Law Degree in Spanish and Chilean universities”. In this study, Jadranka and Iria make a contrastive analysis on the number of Final Degree Projects in the field of Law that exist in the two countries mentioned and the sub-themes they deal with. You can read the summary of the paper and retrieve the presentation in this link.
Sara Pistola, member of the arText team and student of the PhD program in Philology at UNED, presented the sistema arText at the III Jornadas de Corrección de Textos en Español (IIIJCTE), organized by the Universidad del Salvador and held virtually on June 1st and 2nd. Sara’s presentation was entitled “The arText system as a tool for writing texts in specialized fields and in clear language” and you can watch it in the following video:
Yesterday, Jadranka Gladic, lecturer at the Pontífica Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, student of the PhD program in Philology at UNED since 2021 and member of the arText team, gave, as part of the pre- and post-doctoral seminars of the arText team, the seminar entitled “The Final Degree Project in Administrative Law: a comparative analysis between Spain and Chile”. Jadranka Gladic presented the objectives, methodology and first results of her doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr. Iria da Cunha.
We have updated the dissemination brochure to promote sistema arText. You can find it in a bilingual version (Spanish-English).
Iria da Cunha, director of the arText team, presented arText claro at the Clear Writing for Europe 2023 conference. In this edition, the conference was about “Supporting European democracy and transparency through clear language”, with the aim of discussing how public administrations and the European Union can communicate in a clearer way when writing texts addressed to citizens. Iria participated in the Workshop “Drafting and editing tools and resources” together with Stéphanie Guillaume, with the presentation “arText claro: A writing Assistant to draft Spanish administrative texts in plain language”. The conference was attended by more than 1200 people.
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.
Jia Chen, member of the arText team and student of the PhD program in Education at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), presented the progress of her doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr. Iria da Cunha (UNED) and Dr. Juan Antonio Núñez (UAM), at the VIII Jornadas de Doctorado en Educación de la UAM. The conference took place on May 18 and 19 at the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the UAM. The seminar given by Jia Chen was entitled “The use of arText in teaching Spanish as a foreign language to Chinese students: advances in the study”.
