Transius member co-organised the first workshop on AI for translation into plain and easy language

On 23 June 2025, participants from over 20 countries attended the 1st Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Easy and Plain Language in Institutional Contexts co-organised by Paolo CANAVESE and held in conjunction with the MT Summit 2025 in Geneva.

Christiane MAAß (University of Hildesheim) set the ground of this full-day event with an insightful introduction to intralingual translation into plain and easy language as an emerging field of research.

After the keynote lecture, 10 presentations by researchers from several universities explored how AI can be used to create plain and easy language texts across a variety of genres (from administrative to healthcare communication) and languages (including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Lithuanian). The democratic potential of a wider availability of accessible texts through the use of such tools was also emphasised, stressing their role in promoting participation by social groups that are often excluded.

Additionally, Silvia HANSEN-SCHIRRA, Dimitrios KAPNAS and Katharina OSTER (University of Mainz) led an engaging interactive session on prompt engineering for easy-language translation, complemented by a hands-on demonstration of eye-tracking tools to analyse reading difficulty.

Overall, the workshop successfully highlighted how new language technologies can support the creation, validation, and refinement of accessible communication in institutional settings and laid the groundwork for a permanent, interdisciplinary, and international research network in this emerging field.

The proceedings of the workshop are available online.