Search results for "Plain language"

Scientific abstracts and plain language summaries in psychology: A comparison based on readability indices.

2020

Findings from psychological research are usually difficult to interpret for non-experts. Yet, non-experts resort to psychological findings to inform their decisions (e.g., whether to seek a psychotherapeutic treatment or not). Thus, the communication of psychological research to non-expert audiences has received increasing attention over the last years. Plain language summaries (PLS) are abstracts of peer-reviewed journal articles that aim to explain the rationale, methods, findings, and interpretation of a scientific study to non-expert audiences using non-technical language. Unlike media articles or other forms of accessible research summaries, PLS are usually written by the authors of th…

Challenges of Easy and Plain Language in Latvia

2021

In the age of globalisation and digitalisation, the amount of information is constantly increasing. The society’s responsibility is also increasing, as there is a large part of society that needs special support in order to make this information accessible. One way to do that is being able to communicate in easy or plain language. The aim of this article is to reveal easy and/or plain language as one of the measures for an inclusive society, and pinpoint the possibilities of expanding it in Latvia, where there has been little discussion about the different use and text creation methods of easy and plain language. Therefore, professor Dr. paed. Sarmīte Tūbele draws attention to the specifics…

An Online Multilingual Medical Vocabulary/Thesaurus/Dictionary (MED-VTD) for Facilitating Understanding of Medical Texts

Medical texts (e.g., reports and medicine leaflets) are usually written by professionals (physicians, medical researchers, etc.) who use their own language and communication style. On the other hand, they are often read by health consumers or other medical professionals who do not have the same vocabularies and can have difficulties in text comprehension. Thus, to help a generic user in understanding a medical text, it would be desirable to have an online medical vocabulary/thesaurus/dictionary that he/she can easily look for finding the plain equivalent of any medical (technical) term and a definition of the term with the same kind of language. In this work, we present an online multilingu…

El gran reto de la traducción y la accesibilidad audiovisual en los medios de comunicación

2020

Nadie duda ya del importante papel que desempeña la accesibilidad, no solo en el seno de la traducción audiovisual (AVT), sino también dentro los Estudios de Traducción. La accesibilidad no deja de ser un concepto abierto, porque su objetivo último, el de la integración social y la eliminación de barreras de dependencia, debe reexaminarse continuamente en relación con las cambiantes circunstancias de nuestro entorno y, sobre todo, porque también se van modificando nuestras maneras de percibir las cosas. Se reevalúan y se descubren, de hecho, nuevas relaciones de dependencia que habían pasado desapercibidas a partir de un análisis crítico o una 'deconstrucción' de lo que muchas…

¿Qué es una pregunta? Fundamentos pragmalingüísticos para la democratización de los géneros administrativo y judicial || What is a question? Pragmati…

2016

Resumen : Los documentos juridicos y administrativos son dificiles de entender. ?Hay forma de corregirlos? Una de las tecnicas principales en aras de la claridad es la de hacer preguntas. La fundamentacion de nuestra tesis la encontramos en las teorias mas relevantes de la pragmalinguistica, en algunos textos clasicos y en bibliografia reciente sobre lenguaje claro y literacidad en espanol. Es posible y necesario fundamentar las propuestas del lenguaje claro en funcion de los efectos cognitivos que producen en el receptor del mensaje. Aqui, pues, dotamos de bases cientificas al movimiento y contribuimos a atacar el escepticismo con el que se recibe. Abstract : Legal and administrative docum…

Facilitating text understanding for e-learning users

2014

Web information on different disciplines (mainly technical ones) is mainly created by the different experts (engineers, scientists, physicians, lawyers, etc.) who use their own 'technical' language. On the other hand, this information is often read by general users who do not have the same skills and vocabularies of the experts and have difficulties to understand and learn it. In order to allow e-learners to use any document available on the web and understand it, it is desirable to have a system that takes a text written with technical terms and automatically translates it in a plain language and provides additional information with the same kind of language. In this work we present the me…

An automatic system for helping health consumers to understand medical texts

2015

Medical texts (reports, articles, etc.) are usually written by professionals (physicians, medical researchers, etc.) who use their own language and communication style. On the other hand, these texts are often read by health consumers (as in the case of medical reports) who do not have the same skills and vocabularies of the experts and can have difficulties in text comprehension. To help a health consumer in understanding a medical text, it would be desirable to have an automatic system that, given a text written with medical (technical) terms, translates them in simple or plain language and provides additional information with the same kind of language. We have designed such a system. It …

Development and Practical Use of a Medical Vocabulary-Thesaurus-Dictionary for Patient Empowerment

2018

Health empowerment can be obtained through an informative and educational intervention to increase one's ability to think critically and act autonomously. Medical texts are usually written by professionals and can be difficulty understood by non experts who do not have the same skills and vocabularies. Thus, it would be desirable to have an online medical vocabulary-thesaurus-dictionary that can help a non expert to easily find the consumer equivalent of medical (technical) terms and additional consumer information. To this end, we have developed an online multilingual medical vocabulary-thesaurus-dictionary by interconnecting different online sources, i.e., medical vocabularies to create a…

An Overview of Business Writing: Challenges and Solutions

2019

Abstract Bad writing can affect individuals and companies alike. It can cause confusion and misunderstanding, waste important resources of time and money, erode credibility and trust. On the other hand, clear writing will increase productivity, promote goodwill, and cement relations. This article discusses some of the most common problems encountered in business writing, together with their causes and the solutions proposed in the literature. Using too many words, an abstract vocabulary, and passive constructions will obscure the message and tire the reader. Conversely, the elimination of clutter, the use of plain words and personal pronouns, and the construction of sentences with clear sub…

“Plain Language: New perspectives and recent outcomes in European and International arena”.

2014

This EJLR issue on “Plain Language: New perspectives and recent outcomes in European and International arena” draws its plain language reform data from the United Kingdom, Italy, the European Union, Australia, Pakistan, and the international context. The focus of investigation is centrally on the analysis of discourse (very broadly construed to include lexico-grammatical analyses as well as generic and textual analyses) but with the analyses cited in particular contexts (legal, national, and international). These issues are examined in a more detailed form in the contributions to this volume, which focus on the legal, linguistic, and cultural aspects of plain language discourse in different…