@inproceedings{fruth-etal-2024-approach,
    title = "An Approach towards Unsupervised Text Simplification on Paragraph-Level for {G}erman Texts",
    author = "Fruth, Leon  and
      Jegan, Robin  and
      Henrich, Andreas",
    editor = "Nunzio, Giorgio Maria Di  and
      Vezzani, Federica  and
      Ermakova, Liana  and
      Azarbonyad, Hosein  and
      Kamps, Jaap",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Workshop on DeTermIt! Evaluating Text Difficulty in a Multilingual Context @ LREC-COLING 2024",
    month = may,
    year = "2024",
    address = "Torino, Italia",
    publisher = "ELRA and ICCL",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.determit-1.8",
    pages = "77--89",
    abstract = "Text simplification as a research field has received attention in recent years for English and other languages, however, German text simplification techniques are lacking thus far. We present an unsupervised simplification approach for German texts using reinforcement learning (self-critical sequence training). Our main contributions are the adaption of an existing method for English, the selection and creation of German corpora for this task and the customization of rewards for particular aspects of the German language. In our paper, we describe our system and an evaluation, including still present issues and problems due to the complexity of the German language, as well as directions for future research.",
}

Text simplification as a research field has received attention in recent years for English and other languages, however, German text simplification techniques are lacking thus far. We present an unsupervised simplification approach for German texts using reinforcement learning (self-critical sequence training). Our main contributions are the adaption of an existing method for English, the selection and creation of German corpora for this task and the customization of rewards for particular aspects of the German language. In our paper, we describe our system and an evaluation, including still present issues and problems due to the complexity of the German language, as well as directions for future research.
Fruth, Leon Jegan, Robin Henrich, Andreas
An Approach towards Unsupervised Text Simplification on Paragraph-Level for German Texts