cs.CLMar 5, 2026
SaveA Multilingual Human Annotated Corpus of Original and Easy-to-Read Texts to Support Access to Democratic Participatory Processes
Organizations: Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barclona) · Capito AI · Plena Inclusión Madrid · University of Leeds
Abstract
Being able to understand information is a key factor for a self-determined life and society. It is also very important for participating in democratic processes. The study of automatic text simplification is often limited by the availability of high quality material for the training and evaluation on automatic simplifiers. This is true for English, but more so for less resourced languages like Spanish, Catalan and Italian. In order to fill this gap, we present a corpus of original texts for these 3 languages, with high quality simplification produced by human experts in text simplification. It was developed within the iDEM project to assess the impact of Easy-to-Read (E2R) language for democratic participation. The original texts were compiled from domains related to this topic. The corpus includes different text types, selected based on relevance, copyright availability, and ethical standards. All texts were simplified to E2R level. The corpus is particularity valuable because it includes the first annotated corpus of its kind for the Catalan language. It also represents a noteworthy contribution for Spanish and Italian, offering high-quality, human-annotated language resources that are rarely available in these domains. The corpus will be made freely accessible to the public.
Figures & tables
| Language | Original | Simplified |
| Catalan | L’Ajuntament de Barcelona posa a disposició de la ciutadania mitjans que permeten rectificar les seves dades personals (per exemple, un nom mal escrit) o actualitzar-les (per exemple, l’adreça postal), sens perjudici del dret de rectificació reconegut a la normativa de protecció de dades. | L’Ajuntament de Barcelona dona la possibilitat a la ciutadania de canviar o corregir les seves dades personals. Per exemple, si el nom està mal escrit, es pot arreglar. També es pot actualitzar informació com per exemple l’adreça postal. Tot això sense perdre el dret per corregir les dades. |
| Italian | La Convenzione ONU sui Diritti dell’Infanzia e Adolescenza riconosce a tutti i bambini e ragazzi i diritti fondamentali, come il diritto alla protezione, all’educazione e a una vita priva di discriminazioni. | C’è la Convenzione ONU sui Diritti dell’Infanzia e Adolescenza. Una convenzione è come un accordo. ONU sta per Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite. È un’unione di quasi tutti i paesi del mondo. Nella convenzione, ci sono i diritti di tutti i bambini e tutti i ragazzi. Per esempio, hanno questi diritti: * essere al sicuro * studiare * vivere senza essere trattati male |
| Spanish | El panel europeo de ciudadanos sobre la lucha contra el odio en la sociedad ha presentado sus recomendaciones a la Comisión Europea. Durante 3 fines de semana, 150 ciudadanos seleccionados aleatoriamente, en representación de los 27 Estados miembros de la UE, se han reunido para debatir las distintas causas y factores que incitan al odio en la UE y los diferentes ámbitos de actuación para combatirlos. | El panel dedicado a lucha contra el odio, ya hizó sus recomendaciones a la Comisión Europea. 150 ciudadanos de la Unión Europea, elegidos al azar, estuvieron reunidos durante 3 fines de semana para debatir sobre el odio en la Unión Europea y como solucionarlo. |
Table 1: Corpus Examples
| Language | Topic |
| Catalan | Sustainability & Participation; Social Policy & Disability Accessibility; Data Protection; Social Services & Taxation; Digital Governance; Public Policy Discussion; Social Justice; Health & Governance; Justice & Governance; Civic Participation |
| Italian | Children’s Rights & Advocacy; Civic Engagement & Social Responsibility; EU Economic Policy; EU Elections; Organizational Law & Statute; Civic Participation; Legislative Reform & Policy; Referendum & Electoral Systems; Social Policy : Economic & Political Analysis; Social Policy & Advocacy; Government/NGO Policy Communication; Legislative Reform ("Taglia leggi" law); EU Institutions; Environmental Policy & Local Governance |
| Spanish | Social Policy; Health & Governance; EU Economic Policy; Justice & Governance; Political Activism; Justice & Legal Affairs; Communism & Ideology; EU Legislation; Civic Participation; EU Elections; EU Institutions |
Table 2: Corpus’ Topics
| Category | Words | Percentage |
| Informative texts | 4892 | 41.94% |
| Political & Ideological articles | 1146 | 9.82% |
| News articles | 3817 | 32.72% |
| Policy & Legislative Documents | 1810 | 15.52% |
| Total | 11665 | 100.00% |
Table 3: Percentage per category: Spanish
| Category | Words | Percentage |
| Informative texts | 6090 | 52.64% |
| Social Justice & Public Policy Analysis | 1652 | 14.28% |
| Policy & Administrative Documents | 3828 | 33.09% |
| Total | 11570 | 100.00% |
Table 4: Percentage per category: Catalan
| Category | Words | Percentage |
| Informative Texts | 4425 | 42.56% |
| Institutional & Legal Documents | 1247 | 11.99% |
| Political & Legal Analysis | 2680 | 28.24% |
| Advocacy & Social Responsibility | 1789 | 17.21% |
| Total | 10398 | 100.00% |
Table 5: Percentage per category: Italian
| Language | Sentences | Words | Words per | |||
| Segments | Sentence | |||||
| Segment | ||||||
| Orig | Simp | Orig | Simp | Orig | Simp | |
| Spanish | 354 | 1290 | 11665 | 10883 | 32.95 | 8.44 |
| Catalan | 380 | 405 | 11570 | 14279 | 41.32 | 35.26 |
| Italian | 325 | 718 | 10398 | 12230 | 31.99 | 17.03 |
Table 6: Distribution of number of sentence segments and words, and the word per sentence segment ratio for each language
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Use of paragraph breaks or line breaks to separate ideas into different sentences | 241 | 22.8% |
| Use of frequent/common verbs | 116 | 11.0% |
| Use of short, simple, and commonly used nouns | 111 | 10.5% |
| Reordering of sentences into logical structure: subject + verb + predicate | 84 | 7.9% |
| Elimination or substitution of abstract terms, foreign words, vague content, and/or technical jargon | 79 | 7.5% |
| Use of indicative mood and simple tenses (present, simple future, simple past, and imperfect) | 48 | 4.5% |
Table 7: Most frequently used annotation tags: Spanish
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Choose words that are easily understandable and familiar to the target group. | 261 | 55.30% |
| Only use common and frequent adverbs. Avoid adverbs ending in -ment. | 48 | 10.17% |
| When listing elements related to a single idea in one sentence, use commas to separate them. | 34 | 7.20% |
| Write quantities and figures using numbers instead of words. | 22 | 4.66% |
| Create a glossary or include glosses in the document if there are terms that are difficult to understand. | 22 | 4.66% |
| The most common punctuation marks may be used: period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), | 19 | 4.03% |
Table 8: Most frequently used annotation tags: Catalan
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Use of commonly used verbs | 292 | 13.34% |
| Use of periods or commas to separate sentences with multiple ideas | 271 | 12.38% |
| Elimination or modification of abstract terms, foreignisms, vague content, and/or technical jargon | 264 | 12.06% |
| Use of short, simple, and commonly used nouns | 255 | 11.65% |
| Use of commonly used adjectives | 163 | 7.45% |
| Use of commonly used adverbs | 143 | 6.53% |
Table 9: Most frequently used annotation tags: Italian
| Alignment | Count | Percentage |
| 1:1 | 587 | 55.43 |
| 1:2 | 139 | 13.13 |
| 1:3 | 116 | 10.95 |
| 1:4 | 88 | 8.31 |
| 1:5 | 49 | 4.63 |
| 1: 5 | 80 | 7.55 |
Table 10: Alignments over the whole corpus
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Use of paragraph breaks or line breaks to separate ideas into different sentences | 241 | 22.8% |
| Use of frequent/common verbs | 116 | 11.0% |
| Use of short, simple, and commonly used nouns | 111 | 10.5% |
| Reordering of sentences into logical structure: subject + verb + predicate | 84 | 7.9% |
| Elimination or substitution of abstract terms, foreign words, vague content, and/or technical jargon | 79 | 7.5% |
| Use of indicative mood and simple tenses (present, simple future, simple past, and imperfect) | 48 | 4.5% |
Table 11: All annotation tags with frequencies: Spanish
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Choose words that are easily understandable and familiar to the target group. | 261 | 55.30% |
| Only use common and frequent adverbs. Avoid adverbs ending in -ment. | 48 | 10.17% |
| When listing elements related to a single idea in one sentence, use commas to separate them. | 34 | 7.20% |
| Write quantities and figures using numbers instead of words. | 22 | 4.66% |
| Create a glossary or include glosses in the document if there are terms that are difficult to understand. | 22 | 4.66% |
| The most common punctuation marks may be used: period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), | 19 | 4.03% |
Table 12: All annotation tags with frequencies: Catalan
| Simplification Criteria | Count | Percentage |
| Use of commonly used verbs | 292 | 13.34% |
| Use of periods or commas to separate sentences with multiple ideas | 271 | 12.38% |
| Elimination or modification of abstract terms, foreignisms, vague content, and/or technical jargon | 264 | 12.06% |
| Use of short, simple, and commonly used nouns | 255 | 11.65% |
| Use of commonly used adjectives | 163 | 7.45% |
| Use of commonly used adverbs | 143 | 6.53% |
Table 13: All annotation tags with frequencies: Italian