Quantitative Assessment of Text Difficulty in Croatian Language

Abstract

This paper presents past research in the field of statistical text analysis, with special emphasis on development of readability formulas. Apart from the theoretical part on reading, comprehension, and readability, the paper also presents results of analysis of a corpus of English and Croatian texts. Finally, a readability formula for Croatian language is suggested, as modified from Flesch Reading Ease for English language, which could be used as an objective indicator for a rough assessment of text difficulty in Croatian language.

Keywords

• reading
• readability
• Flesch Reading Ease readability formula
• statistical text analysis
• corpus linguistics
• translational and parallel corpora