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Abstract:
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While English has predominantly maintained its lead both as the lingua franca of the Internet
and also for basic man-machine interactions, the need of the day is a system that can cater
to the native by facilitating such communication in the language he is most comfortable. This
calls for the realization of Multilingual Systems that can present the same information in a
variety of languages. The term Multilingual Computing in the present context refers to systems
that are capable of running programs that accept, process and present data in more than one
natural language. The concerned language for interacting with the computer may be selected
at the time of invocation or use of the program. Such multilingual systems do not fully overcome
the man machine barrier. The user still has to comprehend and react to the cryptic messages
presented in the language of his choice. The problem can be overcome only by the use of
natural language processing systems that can translate user commands and queries in his
native language to machine level commands, facilitate execution and present the results in
a manner that is very akin to the responses of a human being. This paper discusses the basic
issues in the formulation of such multilingual systems. |