{ "paper_id": "C90-2006", "header": { "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", "date_generated": "2023-01-19T12:37:18.829415Z" }, "title": "Towards Personal MT: general design~ dialogue structure, potential role of speech", "authors": [ { "first": "Christian", "middle": [], "last": "Boitet", "suffix": "", "affiliation": { "laboratory": "", "institution": "IMAG Institute (UJF & CNRS", "location": { "postBox": "BP 53X", "postCode": "38041", "settlement": "Grenoble Cedex", "country": "France" } }, "email": "" } ], "year": "", "venue": null, "identifiers": {}, "abstract": "Personal MT (PMT) is a new concept in dialoguebased MT (DBMT) , which we are currently studying and prototyping in the LIDIA project Ideally, a PMT system should mn on PCs and be usable by everybody. To get his/her text translated into one or several languages, the writer would accept to cooperate with the system in order to standardize and clarify his/her document. There are many interesting aspects in the design of such a system. The paper briefly presents some of them (llyperText, distributed architectme, guided language, hybrid transfer/iuterlingua, the goes on to study iin more detail the stmctm'e of the dialogue with fl~e writer and flle place of sw.ech synthesis [1].", "pdf_parse": { "paper_id": "C90-2006", "_pdf_hash": "", "abstract": [ { "text": "Personal MT (PMT) is a new concept in dialoguebased MT (DBMT) , which we are currently studying and prototyping in the LIDIA project Ideally, a PMT system should mn on PCs and be usable by everybody. To get his/her text translated into one or several languages, the writer would accept to cooperate with the system in order to standardize and clarify his/her document. There are many interesting aspects in the design of such a system. The paper briefly presents some of them (llyperText, distributed architectme, guided language, hybrid transfer/iuterlingua, the goes on to study iin more detail the stmctm'e of the dialogue with fl~e writer and flle place of sw.ech synthesis [1].", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Abstract", "sec_num": null } ], "body_text": [ { "text": "A second classification of MAT systems is by the types of knowledge felt to be central to their functioning. Linguistic Based MT uses : core knowledge about the language ; specific knowledge about the corpus (domain, typology) ; intrinsic semantics (a term coined by J.Po Desclds to cover all information f(mnally marked in a natural language, but which refers to its interpretation, such as semantic features or relations : concreteness, location, cause, instrument..\u00b0 ) ; but not : extrinsic semantics (static knowledge describing the domain(s) of the mxt, e\u00b0g. in terms of facts and rules) ; situatkmal semantics (describing the dynamic situations and their actors) ; pragmatics (overi: or covert intentions in the comnmnicative comext)..", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "MT i~L~ists on extracting knowledge from a human (the author or a specialist). These options are not exclusive, however. In KBMT-89 [7] , tot example, ambiguities persisting after using linguistic and extralinguistic Imowledge arc solved through a dialogue with the wiitm initiated by the \"augmenter\". In ATR's Machine Interpretation project, tie dialogues center amuud a wello defined rusk (organization of international confbrences), but may also conceru extraneous matters (cultural events, health problems...). This feature, added to the enormous ambiguity inherent in speech input, will likely force such systems to be dialogue-based as well as knowledge-based [5] . In Personal MT, we may rely on some core exla'alinguistic knowledge base, bu.t not on any detailed expertise, because the domains and types of text should be unrestricted. Hence, Personal MT must be primarily dialogue-based.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 132, "end": 135, "text": "[7]", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 666, "end": 669, "text": "[5]", "ref_id": "BIBREF5" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Kn.owledge~Based MT uses extralinguistic kr~owledge on top of linguistic knowledge. Finally, Dialogue-Based", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A third classification of MAT systems is by their internal organization (direct/transfer/interlingua, use of classical or specialized languages, procedurality / declarativeness...) through which ,;o-called \"generations\" have been distinguished. This level of detail will not be too relevant in this paper.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Kn.owledge~Based MT uses extralinguistic kr~owledge on top of linguistic knowledge. Finally, Dialogue-Based", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A project in Personal MT", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "I.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "LIDIA (Large Internationalization of the Documents by Interacting with their Authors) aims at studying the theoretical and methodological issues of the PMT approach, to be experimented on by first building a small prototype, and more generally at promoting this concept within the MT community.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Goals", "sec_num": "1." }, { "text": "We are U'ying to develop an architecture which would be suitable for very large applications, to be upscaled later with industrial parmers if results are promising enough. For example, we don't intend to incorporate more than a few hundred or thousand words in the prototype's (LIDIA-1) dictionaries, although we try to develop robust indexing schemes and to implement the texical dam base in a way which would allow supporting on the order of 1 to 10Mwords in 10 languages. The same goes lor the grammars.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Goals", "sec_num": "1." }, { "text": "Even in a prototype, however, the structure of the dialogue with the author must be studied with care, and offers interesting possibilities. Clearly, the writer should be allowed to write freely, and to decide for himself when and on which part of his docmnent to start any kind of interaction. But changes in the text should be controlled so that not all changes would force !he system to start the interaction anew.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Goals", "sec_num": "1." }, { "text": "From a linguistic point of view, it is extremely exciting to see, at last, a possibility to experiment with Zemb's theme/rheme/pheme \"statutory\" articulation of propositions [1311, and/or Prague's topic/focus opposition, which are claimed to be of utmost importance for translation : both are almost impossible to compute automatically, because the tests are very often expressed in terms of possible transformations in a given discourse context. But, in PMT, we may ask the author.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Goals", "sec_num": "1." }, { "text": "The prototype system for LIDIA-I is constrained as lbllows.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Outline", "sec_num": "2." }, { "text": "Translation from French into Russian, German and English (inversing previous systems), with other target languages being studied in cooperative frameworks ;", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Outline", "sec_num": "2." }, { "text": "Small corpus from the Ariane-G5 user interface (containing some on-line documentation), in HyperCard form ; ", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Outline", "sec_num": "2." }, { "text": "The choice of HyperCard reflects the fact that Hypertexts are becoming the favorite supports for technical documentation. It also relies on the assumption that writers will more readily agree to participating in a dialogue if the tool they are using is very interactive than if they use a more classical text processor. Finally, there are some linguistic advantages.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "tIyperText", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "First, the textual parts are clearly isolated in fields, and not cluttered with images, formulas, tabs, rnarkups, etc. Scripts should not be translated --if they generate messages, these must be taken from normal fields, and not directly generated (linguistic requirements may lead to better programming practices!).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "tIyperText", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Second, the textual parts may be typed, thus greatly facilitating analysis. For example, a given field may contain only titles, another only menu items, another only sentences without the initial subject (which is often contained in another field), etc. A distinct possibility is to define microlanguages as types of very short textual fragments (less than 2 or 3 lines, to be concrete), and to define sublanguages as structured collections of microlanguages for longer textual fragments.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "tIyperText", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The idea to use a distributed architecture has both a practical and theoretical basis. First, we want to use the Ariane-G5 system, a comprehensive generator of MT systems developed over many years [1l] . Although some micros can support this system (PC-AT/370, PS2/7437), their user-friendliness and availability are no match to those of the Mac.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 197, "end": 201, "text": "[1l]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Distributed architecture", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Second, looking at some other experiences (Alps, Weidner), we have concluded that some parts of sophisticated natural language processing can not be performed in real time on small and cheap machines without oversimplifying the linguistic parts and degrading quality down to near uselessness. Rather, it should be possible to perform the \"heavy\" parts in an asynchronous but still user-friendly way, as IBM researchers have done for the Critique system [9] .", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 453, "end": 456, "text": "[9]", "ref_id": "BIBREF10" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Distributed architecture", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Of course, this idea could be implemented on a single machine running under a multitasking operating system, if such a system were available on the most popular micros, and provided the heavy linguistic computations don't take hours.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Distributed architecture", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The \"guided language approach\" is a middle road between free and controlled text. The key to quality in MT, as in other areas of AI, is to restrict the domain in an acceptable way.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Guided Language", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "By \"controlled language\", we understand a subset of natural language restricted in such a way that ambiguities disappear. That is the approach of the TITUS system : no text is accepted unless it completely conforms to one predefined sublanguage. While this technique works very well in a very restricted domain, with professionals producing the texts (technical abstracts in textile, in this case), it seems impossible to generalize it to open-ended uses involving the general public.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Guided Language", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "What seems possible is to define a collection of microlanguages or sublanguages, to associate one with each unit of translation, and to induce the writer/speaker to conform to it, or else to choose another one.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Guided Language", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "By \"hybrid Transfer/Interlingua\", we mean that the interface structures produced by analysis are multilevel structures of the source language, in the sense of Vauquois [4, 11, see also 2, 3], where some parts are universal (logico-semantic relations, semantic features, abstract time, discourse type...), while others are language-specific (morphosyntactic class, gender, number, lexical elements, syntactic functions...). In PMT, because of the necessity of lexical clarification, we should go one step further toward interlingua by relating the \"word senses\" of the vocabularies of all the languages considered in the system and making them independent objects in the lexical dam base.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 168, "end": 171, "text": "[4,", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Hybrid Transfer/Interlingua", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Structure of the dialogue with the writer 1o", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "II.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Interactions concerning typology,", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "II.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Hence, the first interaction planned in LIDIA concerns typology : given a stack, the system will first construct a \"shadow\" file. For each textual field, it will ask its typology (microlanguage for very small texts, sublanguages for others), and attach it to the corresponding shadow record. In the case of \"incomplete\" texts, where for example the subject of the first sentence is to be taken from another field (as in tables containing command names and their explanations), it will ask how to construct a complete text for translation, and attach the corresponding rule to the shadow re, cord.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "terminology and style", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The second level of interaction concerns spelling.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "terminology and style", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Any spellchecker will do. However, it would be best to use a lemmatizer relying on the lexical database of the system, as the user must be allowed to enter new words and will expect a coherent behavior of the entire system.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "terminology and style", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Level three concerns terminology. The lexical database should contain thesaurus relations, indicating among other things the preferred term among a cluster of (quasi-)synonyms (e.g. plane/aircraft/ship/plane). Which term is preferred often depends on local decisions : it should be easy to change it for a particular stack, without of course duplicating the thesaurus. Note that the lexical database should contain a great variety of terms, even incorrect or dubious, whereas terminological databases are usually restricted to normalized or recommended terms. In PMT, we only want to guide the author : if s/he prefers to use a non standard term, that should be allowed.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "terminology and style", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Level four concerns style, understood in a simply quantitative way (average length of sentences, frequency of complex conjuncts/disjuncts, rare verbal forms, specific words like dont in French, relative frequency of nouns/articles, etc.). From the experience of CRITIQUE [9] , it seems that such methods, which work in real time, may be very useful as a first step to guide towards the predetermined text types (micro-or sub-languages).", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 271, "end": 274, "text": "[9]", "ref_id": "BIBREF10" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "terminology and style", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Interactions concerning syntax, semantics and pragmatics", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Until now, the system has worked directly with the text as written by the author. For the remaining types of interaction, it will work on a transcription contained in the shadow record, as well as with some intermediate forms of processing stored in associated records of the shadow file. This fomes to lock the original textual field (unless the author decides to change it and accepts to start again from level two).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Level five concerns the fixed forms, it is quite usual, especially in technical documentation, that some groups of words take a fixed meaning in certain contexts, with specific, non-compositional translations. For example, \"Save as\" as a menu item Save as... is translated in French as F n re g | s t re r s o u s ~., and not as \"Sauver comme\", which would be correct for other uses. As a menu item, this group functions as a proper noun, not as a verbal phrase. The writer should be asked whether a given occurrence of each such group is to be treated as fixed or not. In the first case, an adequate transcription should be generated in the shadow record (\"&FXD_Save as\", for example). Certain elements (such as menu items) should be automatically proposed for insertion in the list.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Level six concerns lexical clarification. First, polysemies are to be solved by asking the writer. For example, the word \"dipldme\" is not ambiguous in French. However, if translating from French into English, 2 possibilities should be given : \"dipldme non terminal\" (\"diploma\") or \"dipldme terminal\" (\"degree\"). Some polysemies are source language specific, some depend on the target languages. We want to treat them in a uniform way, by maintaining in the lexical database the collection of all \"word senses\" (\"acceptions\", not really concepts of an ontology as in KBMT.-89), linked by disambiguating questions/definitions to the words/terms of the languages supported by the system.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Lexical ellipses can also be treated at that level. This problem is particularly annoying in MT. Suppose a text is about a space ship containing a \"centralc 61ectrique\" (\"electric plant\") and a \"centrale inertielle\" (\"inertial guidance system\"). The complete form is often replaced by the elided one: \"centrale\". Although it is vital to disambiguate for translating correctly (by the corresponding elided forms: \"plant\"/\"system\"), no automatic solution is known. A given occurrence may be an elision or not. If yes, it is even more difficult to look for a candidate to the complete form in a hypertext than in a usual text.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "At level seven, file unit of t~anslation (the content of the shadow field) has been submitted to a first step of automatic analysis, which returns a surface structure showing ambiguities of bracketing (PP attachment, scope of coordination...). The questions to the writer should not be asked in linguistic terms. The idea is to rephrase the input text itself, that is, to present tile alternatives in suggestive ways (on screen, or using speech synthesis -see below). Some other ambiguities, for instance on reference (unresolved anaphora) or syntactic functions (\"Which firm manages this office ?\" --where is the subject ?) might be detected at this stage. They may be left tot the next step to solve (actually, this is a general strategy), or solved interactively at that point. In our view, that would best be done by producing paraphrases [Zajac 1988 ], or by \"template resolution\" [16] .", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 843, "end": 854, "text": "[Zajac 1988", "ref_id": "BIBREF12" }, { "start": 886, "end": 890, "text": "[16]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "At level eight, the disambiguated surface structure has been submitted to the deep analysis phase, which returns a multilevel structure (decorated tree encoding several levels of linguistic interpretation, universal as well as language specific). Some ambiguities may appear during this phase, ,and be coded in the structure, such as ambiguities on semantic relations (deep cases), deep actualisation (time, aspect...), discourse type (a French infinitive sentence may be an order or not, for example), or theme/rheme distinction. Template or paraphrase resolution will be used to disambiguate, as no rephrasing of the text can often suffice (e.g. : \"the conquest of the Barbarians\").", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A suggestion of [6] was to delay all interactions until transfer. The view taken here is rather to solve as soon as possible all the ambiguities which can not be solved automatically later, or only with much difficulty. For example, word sense disambiguation takes place quite early in the above scheme, and that may give class disambiguation for free.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 16, "end": 19, "text": "[6]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A more flexible scheme would be to ask about word senses early only if each lemma of the considered wordform has more than one acception. If not, the system could wait until after surface analysis, which reduces almost all morphosyntactic ambiguities. A v~mation would be to disambiguate word senses only after surface analysis Ires been done. A prototype should allow experimenting with various strategies.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Speech synthesis has a place not only in the translation of spoken dialogues, but also in the translation of written texts. We actually think its introduction in Personal MT could be very helpful in enhancing ergonomy and allowing for more natural disambiguation strategies.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "III. Place and quality of speech synthesis in Personal MT", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Speech synthesis of translations may be useful for all kinds of MAT. In MT for the watcher, people could access Japanese technic,'d and scientific textual databases, for example, through rough English MT not only over computer networks, as is currently done in Sweden [10] , but also via the telephone. To produce spoken translations could be even more useful in the case of rapidly changing information (political events, weather bulletins, etc. disseminated to a large public through computer or telephone networks).", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 268, "end": 272, "text": "[10]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis and MT in general", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In the case of professional translation (MAT for the revisor or 1or the translator), the main area today is the translation of large technical documents. With the advent of widely available hypermedia techniques, these documents are starting to contain not only text and images, but also sound, used for instance to stress some important w,'maing messages.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis and MT in general", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Personal MT could be used for translating technical documents as well as all kinds of written material not relying on creative use of language (i.e. poetry). It could also be used for communication within multilingual teams working together and linked by a network, or by phone. Finally, it could be used for the multilingual dissemination of information created on-line by a monolingual operator (sports events, fairs...) and made accessible in written form (electronic boards, miuitcl) as well as in spoken form (loudspeakers, radio, telephone), whence the need for speech synthesis.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis and MT in general", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Hence, spoken output does not imply spoken input, and should be considered for all kinds of machine aided translation. As complete linguistic structures of the translations are created during the MT process, speech synthesis should be of better quality than current text-tospeech techniques can provide. This does not apply to MAT for the translator, however (although the translator, being a specialist, could perhaps be asked to insert marks concerning prosody, rhythm and pauses, analogous with formatting markups).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis and MT in general", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Dialogue utterances concern the communication between the system and the user, the translation process (reformulation, clarification), and the translation system (e.g. interrogation or modification of its lexical database).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis of dialogue utterances", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In Telephone Interpretation of dialogues, all dialogue utterances must obviously be in spoken form, the written form being made available only if the phone is coupled to a screen. In translation of written material, it could be attractive to incorporate speech synthesis in the dialogue itself, as an enhancement to its visual form, for the same ergonomic reasons as above, and because", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech synthesis of dialogue utterances", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "spoken alternatives might be intrinsically more suggestiw~ than written ones in order to resolve ambiguities --pauses and melody may help to delimit groups and pinpoint their dependencies, while phrasal stress may give useful indications on the theme/rheme division.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "4,", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In the case of non-dialogue-based systems, there are only fixed messages, and on-line speech synthesis is not really necessary, because the acoustic codings can be precomputed. In the case of dialogue-based Machine Translation, however, an important part of the dialogue concerns 'variable elements, such as the translated texts or the dictionaries, where definitions or dismnbiguating questions could be inserted.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "4,", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Speech synthesis of input seems to be required when producing a document in several languages, with some spoken parts. It would be strange that the source language documentation not have the spoken parts, or that the author be forced to read them aloud. In the latter case, a space problem would also arise, because speech synthesis can produce an acoustic coding (later fed to a voice synthesis chip) much more compact than any representation of the acoustic signal itself.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech in PMT : synthesis of input texts or reverse translations", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The concept of reverse translation could be very useful in PMT. The idea is to give to the author, who is presumed not to know the target language(s), some control over the translations. In human translation or interpretation, it often happens that the writer or speaker asks \"what has been translated\". By analogy, a PMT system should be able to translate in reverse. Technically, it would do so by starting from the deep structure of the target text, and not from the target text itself, in order not to introduce spurious ambiguities (although having both possibilities could possibly help in detecting accidental ambiguities created in the target language).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech in PMT : synthesis of input texts or reverse translations", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Note that speech synthesis of reverse translations might be ergonomically at~active, even if no spoken form is required for the final results (translations or input texts), because screens tend to become cluttered with too much information, and because reading the screen in detail quickly becomes tiring.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Speech in PMT : synthesis of input texts or reverse translations", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The need for very high quality speech synthesis in DBMT It has been surprisingly difficult for researchers in speech synthesis to argue convincingly about the need for very high quality. Current text to speech systems are quite cheap and seem acceptable to laymen. Of course, it is tiring to listen to them for long periods, but in common applications, such as telephone enquiry, interactions are short, or of fixed nature (time-of-day service), in which case synthesis can proceed from prerecorded fragments.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "DBMT, as envisaged above, seems to offer a context in which very high quality could and should be demanded of speech synthesis.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "2.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "First, the writer/speaker would be in frequent interaction with the system, even if each interaction is short. The overall quality of speech synthesis depends on three factors : voice synthesis (production of the signal from the acoustic coding) ; linguistic analysis (word class recognition, decomposition into groups), for correct pronunciation of individual words, or contextual treatment (liaisons in French) ; pragmatic analysis (communicative intent : speech act, theme/rheme division...), for pauses, rhythm and prosody.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Ergonomy", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "We will consider the first factor to be fixed, and work oil the linguistic and pragmatic ~spects.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Ergonomy", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Of course, certain parts of the dialogue could be prerecorded, namely the messages concerning the interaction with the system itself. However, users might rather prefer a uniform quality of speech synthesis. In that case, these messages might be stored in the same acoustic coding format as the texts produced under linguistic control.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Ergonomy", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "We have seen two main ways of disambiguating structural ambiguities in DBMT, namely rephrasing and paraphrasing. Rephrasing means to present the original text in different ways. Suppose we want to disambiguate the famous sentence \"He saw a girl in the park with a telescope\" by presenting the alternatives on a screen. We might get something like : If the disambiguation happens orally, the spoken forms should be presented in tile same register as in the original (here, affirmative), but very clearly distinguished, so that a human could reconstruct the forms above. The availability of complete linguistic structures is necessary, but not sufficient, because understandability is not enough : distinguishability is a new requirement for speech synthesis.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Ambiguity resolution by rephrasing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "I-", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Ambiguity resolution by rephrasing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In disambiguation by paraphrasing or template generation (generation of abbreviated paraphrases, as it were), questions should be generated, with their focus clearly indicated by stress arid prosody. For instance :", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Other types of linguistic interactions", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Is the girl or the park with a telescope ?", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Other types of linguistic interactions", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In the same manner, speech quality is very important if word sense disambiguation is clone orally. Since some new words or new ~nses of existing words may be added by the user, the disambiguation processes should apply ~.o their definitions in the same way as they do to the ~exts/utterances to be wanslated.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Other types of linguistic interactions", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "All preceding remarks are of course even more valid :in the case of oral input, where speech is tile primary means of interaction, and the quality of the signal is reduced by the transmission channel.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Other types of linguistic interactions", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The concept of Persona] MT crystallizes many ideas from previous systems and research (text-critiquing, interactive MT, dialogue-based MT, Machine Interpretation of spoken dialogues, controlled languages...). However, the perspective of interacting with lhe author, not required to have any knowledge of Ihe target language(s), linguistics, or translation, puts Ihings in an original framework.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Conclusion", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "While the development of systems of this nature poses old problems in a new way, and offers interesting new possibilities to the developers, their acceptability and usefulness will perhaps result more from their crgonomy than from their intrinsic linguistic quality, how necessary it may be.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Conclusion", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Promotion of the National Languages is becoming quite important nowadays, but, apart of efforts to teach a few foreign languages, no technical solution has yet been proposed to help people write in their own language and communicate with other people in their own l~guages. Personal MT could be such a solution. We strongly hope that many researchers will take interest in this new field of MT.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Conclusion", "sec_num": null } ], "back_matter": [ { "text": "Although speech synthesis of the input or output i exts had been considered for the initial design or the project, and thought to be usefid in other parts, it was J.I. Tsujii who pointed to me how interesting it would be to use it in ambiguity resolution, provided we can reach the necessary quality. I am also grateful to J.Ph. Guilbaud, E. Blanc, and M. Embar for reviewing earlier drafts of this paper. While their help was very valuable for improving both content and form, the remaining deficiencies are of course mine.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Acknowledgements", "sec_num": null } ], "bib_entries": { "BIBREF0": { "ref_id": "b0", "title": "Motivations and architecture of the LIDIA project", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Boitet Ch", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1989, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "BOITET Ch. (1989) Motivations and architecture of the LIDIA project.", "links": null }, "BIBREF1": { "ref_id": "b1", "title": "PROS and CONS of the pivot eazd transfer approaches in multilingual Machine Translation. New Directions in MT", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Boitet Ch", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1988, "venue": "BSO conf", "volume": "13", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "BOITET Ch. 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He sawthe girl
in the park
with a telescope
2-He sawthe girl
in the park
with a telescope
3 -He sawthe girl
in the park
with a telescope
4-He sawthe girl
in the park
with a telescope
5-He sawthe girl
in the park
" } } } }