Towards Multilingual Protocol Generation For Spontaneous Speech Dialogues

: This paper presents a novel multi-lingual progress protocol generation module. The module is used within the speech-to--speech translation system VERBMOBIL. The task of the protocol is to give the dialogue partners a brief description of the content of their dialogue. We utilize an .abstract representation describing, for instance, thematic information and dialogue acts of the dialogue utterances. From this representation we generate simplified paraphrases of the individual turns of the dialogue which together make up the protocol. Instead of writing completely new software, the protocol generation component is almost exclusively composed of already existing modules in the system which are extended by planning and formatting routines for protocol formulations. We describe how the abstract information is extracted from user utterances in different languages and how the abstract thematic representation is used to generate a protocol in one specific language. Future directions are given. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n VERBMOBIL is a research project aiming at a Speech-To-Speech translation system for Face-toFace dialogues [Bub and Schwinn 1996, Bub, Wahlster, and Waibel 1997, Wahlster 1993]. In its first phase (1993 1996), a bilingual (English-German) system for t ime scheduling negotiation dialogues was developed. For its current second phase (1997 -2000) , a third language, Japanese, has been incorporated. Additionally, more than two people should be able to participate in the dialogue, a sett ing we call multi-party. For the second phase, a novel system feature is currently under development protocol generation. The idea is to provide the user(s ) with three kinds of protocols: P r o g r e s s P r o t o c o l The most salient parts of the dialogue are summarized. R e s u l t P r o t o c o l The result of the negotiation is summarized. S t a t u s P r o t o c o l The current status of the negotiation is summarized. The first two are generated after the dialogue is finished. For the result protocol, a summarization of the goal reached in the negotiation is generated. The progress protocol serves as a simplified recapitulation of the progress of the dialogue, whereas the status protocol will, o n demand, be generated during the ongoing dialogue. Its task is to deliver a brief description of the current status of the dialogue. All protocols must be generated in all three languages, pu t t ing extra requests on the protocol generation component; particularly, being as language independent as possible. In this paper we focus on the first of the protocol types listed above the progress protocol. "The research within VBRBMOBIL presented here is funded by the German Ministry of Research and Technology under grant 01IV101K/1. The authors would like to thank Amy Demeisi, Michael Kipp, Norbert Reithinger and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts on this paper.