Do professionally adapted texts follow existing Easy-to-Understand (E2U) language guidelines? A quantitative analysis of two professionally adapted corpora

Andreea Deleanu, Constantin Orăsan, Shenbin Qian, Anastasiia Bezobrazova, Sabine Braun


Abstract
Easy-to-Understand (E2U) language varieties have been recognized by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a means to prevent communicative exclusion of those facing cognitive barriers and guarantee the fundamental right to Accessible Communication. However, guidance on what it is that makes language ‘easier to understand’ is still fragmented and vague, leading practitioners to rely on their individual expertise. For this reason, this article presents a quantitative corpus analysis to further understand which features of E2U language can more effectively improve verbal comprehension according to professional practice. This is achieved by analysing two parallel corpora of standard and professionally adapted E2U articles to identify adaptation practices implemented according to, in spite of or in addition to official E2U guidelines (Deleanu et al., 2024). The results stemming from the corpus analysis, provide insight into the most effective adaptation strategies that can reduce complexity in verbal discourse. This article will present the methods and results of the corpus analysis.
Anthology ID:
2025.aielpl-1.8
Volume:
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Easy and Plain Language in Institutional Contexts (AI & EL/PL)
Month:
June
Year:
2025
Address:
Geneva, Switzerland
Editors:
María Isabel Rivas Ginel, Patrick Cadwell, Paolo Canavese, Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Martin Kappus, Anna Matamala, Will Noonan
Venue:
AIELPL
SIG:
Publisher:
European Association for Machine Translation
Note:
Pages:
73–93
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.aielpl-1.8/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Andreea Deleanu, Constantin Orăsan, Shenbin Qian, Anastasiia Bezobrazova, and Sabine Braun. 2025. Do professionally adapted texts follow existing Easy-to-Understand (E2U) language guidelines? A quantitative analysis of two professionally adapted corpora. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Easy and Plain Language in Institutional Contexts (AI & EL/PL), pages 73–93, Geneva, Switzerland. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
Do professionally adapted texts follow existing Easy-to-Understand (E2U) language guidelines? A quantitative analysis of two professionally adapted corpora (Deleanu et al., AIELPL 2025)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.aielpl-1.8.pdf