When multilingual communication through a speech-to-speech translation system is supported by multimodal features, e.g. pen-based gestures, the following issues arise concerning the nature of the supported communication: a) to what extend does multilingual communication differ from ‘ordinary’ monolingual communication with respect to the dialogue structure and the communicative strategies used by participants; b) the patterns of integration between speech and gestures. Building on the outcomes of a previous work, we present results from a study aimed at addressing those issues. The initial findings confirm that multilingual communication, and the way in which it is realized by actual systems (e.g., with or without the push-to-talk mode) affects the form and structure of the conversation.

NESPOLE! is a speech-to-speech machine translation research system designed to provide fully functional speech-to-speech capabilities within real-world settings of common users involved in e-commerce applications. The project is funded jointly by the European Commission and the US NSF. The NESPOLE! system uses a client-server architecture to allow a common user, who is browsing web-pages on the internet, to connect seamlessly in real-time to an agent of the service provider, using a video-conferencing channel and with speech-to-speech translation services mediating the conversation. Shared web pages and annotated images supported via a Whiteboard application are available to enhance the communication.