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# Balancing Expressiveness and Simplicity in an Interlingua for Task Based Dialogue

**Authors:** [Lori Levin](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/lori-levin/), Donna Gates, Dorcas Pianta, Roldano Cattoni, Nadia Mana, Kay Peterson, [Alon Lavie](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/alon-lavie/), Fabio Pianesi · **Year:** 2002 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the ACL-02 Workshop on Speech-to-Speech Translation **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W02-0708](https://aclanthology.org/W02-0708/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) — summary only

[**19** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2425133932) openalex · 2026-10-18[**5** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/levin-2002-balancing-expressiveness-simplicity-interlingua-task/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the ACL-02 Workshop on Speech-to-Speech Translation: Algorithms and Systems](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W02-07/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W02-0708/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W02-0708.pdf)
- [DOI 10.3115/1118656.1118664](https://doi.org/10.3115/1118656.1118664)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2425133932)

**Authors (8)**

1. [Lori Levin](https://openalex.org/A5008257790) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0831-3063) · h 27 · 2713 citations · 141 works
2. Donna Gates
3. [Dorcas Pianta](https://openalex.org/A5091242580) h 20 · 1481 citations · 129 works
4. [Roldano Cattoni](https://openalex.org/A5046766323) h 17 · 1521 citations · 74 works
5. [Nadia Mana](https://openalex.org/A5049079205) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0678-1261) · h 17 · 951 citations · 63 works
6. [Kay Peterson](https://openalex.org/A5031281793) h 9 · 484 citations · 24 works
7. Alon Lavie
8. [Fabio Pianesi](https://openalex.org/A5110228068) h 35 · 4381 citations · 135 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The paper compares two domain-action interlinguas for speech translation in travel dialogue. The older C-star II format has 44 speech acts, 93 concepts and 117 argument names; the Nespole format is finer, with 65 speech acts, 110 concepts and 292 arguments. The authors re-tag the C-star II database (about 2,300 English and 7,100 non-English sentences) with the Nespole format and measure two things: the no-tag rate, the share of sentences that no expert can express in the interlingua, and how many distinct domain actions the data needs as it grows. The no-tag rate falls from 7.3 percent to 2.4 percent on the C-star data. Only about 50 domain actions cover 60 to 70 percent of the sentences, and the combined domains need more than 600. Cross-site reliability is weaker for Nespole: intra-site evaluations beat cross-site ones.

## Ideas

- I1. Report a coverage rate for the meta-world: the share of source sentences, per author, in which every token gets a concept and a tag. Count it on the verse-aligned pairs, run it twice, and write it next to the residual.
- I2. Plot the frequency curve of meta concepts. If a small head of concepts covers most tokens, the lexicon is compact; the long tail is where the lexicon merges are most likely to be noise, so check those merges first.
- I3. Cross-site reliability as a test of merges: two independent readers (for example the Hebrew reader and a second aligner) should agree on the concept of a token before a merge is kept. Measure the agreement on the merges that were accepted.
- I4. Keep a coarse layer above the concept, like the speech-act part of a domain action: a small closed set of meta relations or verse-level roles that the encoder can read without the concept. This answers the scalability worry without growing the concept table.

## For Mova

The place is `tools/translate` (`meta.rs`, the lexicon). The paper's domain actions are hand-built, while Mova would count its coarse layer from the data. It touches open problem 2 (keep a merge only if it lowers the bits) and open problem 1 (coarse relations on meta tokens). The paper gives no residual-style measure, so the coverage and merge audit above are the new parts to add.

Topics: [Speech act theory](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/speech-act-theory/) · [Machine translation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/machine-translation/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.3115/1118656.1118664](https://doi.org/10.3115/1118656.1118664)

```
@inproceedings{levin2002balancing,
  title = {{Balancing Expressiveness and Simplicity in an Interlingua for Task Based Dialogue}},
  author = {Levin, Lori and Gates, Donna and Pianta, Dorcas and Cattoni, Roldano and Mana, Nadia and Peterson, Kay and Lavie, Alon and Pianesi, Fabio},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACL-02 Workshop on Speech-to-Speech Translation: Algorithms and Systems},
  year = {2002},
  doi = {10.3115/1118656.1118664},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/1118656.1118664}
}
```

- [← previous The Correct Place of Lexical Semantics in Interlingual MT](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/levin-1994-correct-place-lexical-semantics-interlingual/)
- [next → Delete, Retrieve, Generate: A Simple Approach to Sentiment and Style Transfer](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/li-2018-delete-retrieve-generate-simple-approach/)
- [↑ back to Machine translation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/mtrans/)

## References

8 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Bonnie J. Dorr. 1993. Machine Translation: A View from the Lexicon. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bonnie+J%2E+Dorr%2E+1993%2E+Machine+Translation%3A+A+View+from+the+Lexicon%2E+The+MIT+Press%2C+Cambridge%2C+Massachusetts%2E)
2. Bonnie J. Dorr. 1994. Machine Translation Divergences: A Formal Description and Proposed Solution. Computational Linguistics, 20(4):597–633. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bonnie+J%2E+Dorr%2E+1994%2E+Machine+Translation+Divergences%3A+A+Formal+Description+and+Proposed+Solution%2E+Computational+Linguistics%2C+20%284%29%3A597%E2%80%93633%2E) [our card](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/dorr-1994-machine-translation-divergences-formal-description/)
3. Kenneth Goodman and Sergei Nirenburg. 1991. The KBMT Project: A Case Study in Knowledge-Based Machine Translation. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kenneth+Goodman+and+Sergei+Nirenburg%2E+1991%2E+The+KBMT+Project%3A+A+Case+Study+in+Knowledge%2DBased+Machine+Translation%2E+Morgan+Kaufmann%2C+San+Mateo%2C+CA%2E)
4. Alon Lavie, Florian Metze, Roldano Cattoni, and Erica Constantini. 2002. A Multi-Perspective Evaluation of the NESPOLE! Speech-to-Speech Translation System. In Proceedings of Speech-to-Speech Translation: Algorithms and Systems. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alon+Lavie%2C+Florian+Metze%2C+Roldano+Cattoni%2C+and+Erica+Constantini%2E+2002%2E+A+Multi%2DPerspective+Evaluation+of+the+NESPOLE%21+Speech%2Dto%2DSpeech+Translation+System%2E+In+Proceedings+of+Speech%2Dto%2DSpeech+Translat)
5. Young-Suk Lee, W. Yi, Clifford Weinstein, and Stephanie Seneff. 2001. Interlingua-based broad-coverage korean-to-english translation. In Proceedings of HLT, San Diego. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Young%2DSuk+Lee%2C+W%2E+Yi%2C+Clifford+Weinstein%2C+and+Stephanie+Seneff%2E+2001%2E+Interlingua%2Dbased+broad%2Dcoverage+korean%2Dto%2Denglish+translation%2E+In+Proceedings+of+HLT%2C+San+Diego%2E)
6. Lori Levin, Donna Gates, Alon Lavie, and Alex Waibel. 1998. An Interlingua Based on Domain Actions for Machine Translation of Task-Oriented Dialogues. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (IC-SLP’98), pages Vol. 4, 1155–1158, Sydney, Australia. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lori+Levin%2C+Donna+Gates%2C+Alon+Lavie%2C+and+Alex+Waibel%2E+1998%2E+An+Interlingua+Based+on+Domain+Actions+for+Machine+Translation+of+Task%2DOriented+Dialogues%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+International+Conference+on)
7. Lori Levin, Donna Gates, Alon Lavie, Fabio Pianesi, Dorcas Wallace, Taro Watanabe, and Monika Woszczyna. 2000a. Evaluation of a Practical Interlingua for Task-Oriented Dialogue. In Workshop on Applied Interlinguas: Practical Applications of Interlingual Approaches to NLP, Seattle. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lori+Levin%2C+Donna+Gates%2C+Alon+Lavie%2C+Fabio+Pianesi%2C+Dorcas+Wallace%2C+Taro+Watanabe%2C+and+Monika+Woszczyna%2E+2000a%2E+Evaluation+of+a+Practical+Interlingua+for+Task%2DOriented+Dialogue%2E+In+Workshop+on+Applied)
8. Lori Levin, Alon Lavie, Monika Woszczyna, Donna Gates, Marsal Gavaldà, Detlef Koll, and Alex Waibel. 2000b. The Janus-III Translation System. Machine Translation. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lori+Levin%2C+Alon+Lavie%2C+Monika+Woszczyna%2C+Donna+Gates%2C+Marsal+Gavalda%CC%80%2C+Detlef+Koll%2C+and+Alex+Waibel%2E+2000b%2E+The+Janus%2DIII+Translation+System%2E+Machine+Translation%2E)