The first Answer Validation Exercise (AVE) has been launched at the Cross Language Evaluation Forum 2006. This task is aimed at developing systems able to decide whether the answer of a Question Answering system is correct or not. The exercise is described here together with the evaluation methodology and the systems results. The starting point for the AVE 2006 was the reformulation of the Answer Validation as a Recognizing Textual Entailment problem, under the assumption that hypothesis can be automatically generated instantiating hypothesis patterns with the QA systems' answers. 11 groups have participated with 38 runs in 7 different languages. Systems that reported the use of logic have obtained the best results in their respective subtasks.

This paper describes the design, development and field evaluation of a machine translation system from Spanish to Spanish Sign Language (LSE: Lengua de Signos Española). The developed system focuses on helping Deaf people when they want to renew their Driver's License. The system is made up of a speech recognizer (for decoding the spoken utterance into a word sequence), a natural language translator (for converting a word sequence into a sequence of signs belonging to the sign language), and a 3D avatar animation module (for playing back the signs). For the natural language translator, three technological approaches have been implemented and evaluated: an example-based strategy, a rule-based translation method and a statistical translator. For the final version, the implemented language translator combines all the alternatives into a hierarchical structure. This paper includes a detailed description of the field evaluation. This evaluation was carried out in the Local Traffic Office in Toledo involving real government employees and Deaf people. The evaluation includes objective measurements from the system and subjective information from questionnaires.The paper details the main problems found and a discussion on how to solve them (some of them specific for LSE).

a b s t r a c tThis paper describes the development of a Spoken Spanish generator from sign-writing. The sign language considered was the Spanish sign language (LSE: Lengua de Signos Española). This system consists of an advanced visual interface (where a deaf person can specify a sequence of signs in signwriting), a language translator (for generating the sequence of words in Spanish), and finally, a text to speech converter. The visual interface allows a sign sequence to be defined using several sign-writing alternatives. The paper details the process for designing the visual interface proposing solutions for HCI-specific challenges when working with the Deaf (i.e. important difficulties in writing Spanish or limited sign coverage for describing abstract or conceptual ideas). Three strategies were developed and combined for language translation to implement the final version of the language translator module. The summative evaluation, carried out with Deaf from Madrid and Toledo, includes objective measurements from the system and subjective information from questionnaires. The paper also describes the first Spanish-LSE parallel corpus for language processing research focused on specific domains. This corpus includes more than 4000 Spanish sentences translated into LSE. These sentences focused on two restricted domains: the renewal of the identity document and driver's license. This corpus also contains all sign descriptions in several sign-writing specifications generated with a new version of the eSign Editor. This new version includes a grapheme to phoneme system for Spanish and a SEA-HamNoSys converter.

Abstract-Several issues concerning the current use of speech interfaces are discussed and the design and development of a speech interface that enables air traffic controllers to command and control their terminals by voice is presented. A special emphasis is made in the comparison between laboratory experiments and field experiments in which a set of ergonomics-related effects are detected that can not be observed in the controlled laboratory experiments.The paper presents both objective and subjective performance obtained in field evaluation of the system with student controllers at an air traffic control (ATC) training facility. The system exhibits high word recognition test rates (0.4% error in Spanish and 1.5% in English) and low command error (6% error in Spanish and 10.6% error in English in the field tests). Subjective impression has also been positive, encouraging future development and integration phases in the Spanish ATC terminals designed by Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA).

This paper presents the development of a speech interface for controlling a high fidelity system from natural language sentences. A Bayesian Belief Network approach is proposed for dialog modeling. This solution is applied to infer the user's goals corresponding to the processed utterances. Subsequently, from the inferred goals, missing or spurious concepts are automatically detected. This is used to drive the dialog prompting for missing concepts and clarifying for spurious concepts allowing more flexible and natural dialogs. A dialog strategy which makes use of the dialog history and the system's state is also presented.