Convert Standard English into Basic English
Including 30,000 scientific words in footnotes.
Now it can also do multi-lingual multi-document summaries automatically.

Basic English

Because English is the language that people use most to communicate and not everybody speaks it fluently, it could be frustrating not to understand an interesting business, legal, technical, scientific text or even literature. There is a large number of people who have some knowledge of the English language but a very limited vocabulary so more complex material is hard to read. That's when Ogden Basic English comes in because, if a reader has a basic knowledge of English or is prepared to go through the 45 steps required to learn Basic English (see the “Learn basic English” tab in the menu), with the help of Simplish any document however hard can be successfully read and understood! Our Basic English dictionary currently contains more than 90,000 words, including names of towns, cities, materials, substances, etc. and we have even simplified 30,000 common scientific words, which are described in footnotes where necessary. So, the total Simplish vocabulary is currently of the order of 120,000 words. Current work is aimed at producing a legal, philosophy and a business Basic English dictionary.


We use a different approach to the error-prone process of translation between languages: we assume the reader has some limited knowledge of English and so will be able to read the text after a process of Simplification. When translating from one language to another, particulaly between languages with different linguistic roots, sometimes crucial information is lost. Using Simplish you lose nothing, if you or the person you are trying to communicate with has at least a 1,000 words long vocabulary in English. By popular demand, we have recently added access to the Google translation API so that Premium & Platinum subscribers can obtain the Basic English version of text written in any of the major languages. Enter hard text into the box at the top of the page. Click "Simplify" and you'll instantly see an easier 1,000-word version, for fast understanding. Do you dislike dictionaries because they're confusing and unhelpful? You'll love Simplish's clear, easy-to-understand definitions - they change to match the original word or phrase's meaning so they make sense.


Using our general cognition engine and Simplish, we are able to generate a multi-document summary, based on a representation of knowledge in the the form of a sequence of multi-dimensional ideograms, very similar to the ideas behind Chinese symbols, making our system capable of “understanding” language and do summaries in standard English or any major language. The system can leave out any sentences whose meaning is repeated or any irrelevant material present. Moreover, now that the Google translation API has been added, Platinum subscribers can do multilingual multi-document summaries!

Summarizing algorithm

Because important information is often not mentioned many times, standard methods can yield inadequate results. Our algorithm does not look at specific pre-selected words, word frequencies, ontologies, topic maps, word sequences, pattern-matching or any prior training! Our strategy is based on Peirce's ideas on abduction. We take the first document/text as the reference (which can itself be a summary, thus enabling an iterative approach) that is to be expanded by adding knowledge obtained from subsequent documents, we generate a sequence of multi-dimensional ideograms representing each sentence, and only include a sentence coming from other documents in the summary if they lie within this multidimensional path; i.e. if they are relevant. If a sentence coming from any document is close to an existing ideogram, it is ignored on the basis that it represents existing knowledge. The user only needs to give the system two parameters: a threshold of when two concepts should be considered identical and the level of summarization desired (relevance).

How do we get from

standard to

simplish version?

75,000 standard English words

30,000 scientific & technology words

Explained in footnotes

Simple Basic English version using a basic 1,000 words vocabulary

Summarize and/or Simplify your own files and have your own personal dictionary

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Simple English tools

We built the place for your translations for several different sectors and specific terminology.

Professional Human Translation

Ensure that your text is clear, accurate and easy to understand by using our translation service. Currently, we are able to offer a service from our experienced in-house translators to help bring your texts from French, Italian, German, Spanish or Catalan to Standard or Basic English.

Proof Reading and Text Editing

This is the easiest way to bring your texts into Standard or Basic English, while fixing the issues that arise from machine translation. Your texts will be corrected by native speaker.

Design Editing and Writing

This full service uses your notes and texts to create a well-designed package in Standard or Basic English. Your materials, speeches or papers will be ready for professional use.