The Miðeind team has been hard at work this winter improving Málfríður in various ways. We are delighted with the results and look forward to seeing what users think. The improvements include:

• Readability score and uncommon words

• More precise and ignored suggestions

• Document proofreading

• Model improvements and increased limits

Readability score

In Málfríður, you can now find a new experimental feature at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. When text is written or pasted into the interface, an analysis of how readable the text is, called a readability score, will appear at the bottom. The readability score is based on a simple method that can give an idea of how difficult a text is to read based on sentence length and word length. The formula calculates a score based on the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word, and has been adapted for Icelandic. A higher score indicates a more easily readable text, as the formula measures readability, not difficulty.

The readability score sheds light on the text's readability but does not take into account its content or style. To examine the text from another angle, the words in the text that appear least frequently in published Icelandic texts are also provided. This does not necessarily mean they do not belong in the text, but they are likely to be challenging for readers and may be suitable for rephrasing or further explanation. You can click on each word to see where it appears in the text; if a word appears multiple times, you can click repeatedly to go through all its locations in the text.

Together, the readability score and the uncommon words provide a good picture of how easy the text is to read and what in it might be considered complex and require further explanation or rephrasing. Another feature within Málfríður, plain language, which can be found under text processing in the right-hand sidebar, is useful for rephrasing the text or at least getting ideas for wording that might be more accessible.

This feature adds an important dimension to Málfríður, making it easier for you to tailor the text better to your target audience and make it more accessible. You can provide feedback by clicking on Tilraunavirkni (experimental feature) in the box. We gratefully accept all suggestions for what could be improved.

More precise suggestions

The proofreading in Málfríður has also been given an overhaul, and now each suggestion provides more information about what it entails. There is a particularly significant difference in suggestions related to too few or too many spaces and how they are presented. The suggestions have also been colour-coded to make it easier to get an overview with a quick scan.

Ignore suggestions

Málfríður has its own style and points out what does not conform to it. We have now added the option to ignore certain things that Málfríður flags which are part of your authorial style. You can view a suggestion in the sidebar or in the editor and click on Ignore suggestion. After that, you will not see suggestions of that type in Málfríður. You can view the suggestions you have ignored under Ignored suggestions and can stop ignoring them at any time.

Document proofreading

We recently introduced document translation, where you can submit a Word, PowerPoint, or OpenDocument file and download a translated copy that maintains the document's formatting, without having to open the document in the Málstaður interface. We are continuing in this direction and are now introducing document proofreading. You can now submit the same types of documents as for document translation and receive a document back with corrections and comments. You can then open the corrected document in Word and review all the suggestions in track changes mode.

Improved model

We have put considerable effort this winter into improving the model behind the proofreading in Málfríður, both in terms of data and the training process itself. We have seen a significant improvement in the model's performance and have set up more experiments to achieve the best possible behaviour.

Increased benefits

In addition to all this, we have now raised the limits in Málfríður, so that in fixed and free subscriptions, it is now possible to submit 100,000 characters at a time instead of the previous 30,000.

Coming soon

We are sailing into summer happy with the winter's achievements, but many other new features await in the autumn, such as OCR for PDF documents and workflows to simplify work processes.

Finally

We are very excited to see how the new functionality will be used and have many other interesting things in the pipeline. We encourage users to keep an eye out for announcements about exciting new features that will make working with Icelandic text even easier and more efficient. You can follow us here on our website, on Facebook, Instagram and on LinkedIn.

As always, we very much look forward to putting the latest and best language technology and AI for Icelandic into the hands of the Icelandic community in a transparent and responsible way.