A Controllable Text Simplification System for the Italian Language

Text simplification is a non-trivial task that aims at reducing the linguistic complexity of written texts. Researchers have studied the problem by proposing new methodologies for addressing the English language, but other languages, like the Italian one, are almost unexplored. In this paper, we give a contribution to the enhancement of the Automated Text Simplification research by presenting a deep learning-based system, inspired by a state of the art system for the English language, capable of simplifying Italian texts. The system has been trained and tested by leveraging the Italian version of Newsela; it has shown promising results by achieving a SARI value of 30.17.