Dialogue supporting apparatus

Abstract

A dialogue supporting apparatus is provided which carries out a trade-off between the speed of the translation process and the fluency of the translation result, in accordance with the contents of a dialogue. The dialogue supporting apparatus includes a first input accepting unitwhich accepts an utterance of a userin a first language, a first translation processing unitwhich translates the accepted utterance into a predetermined second language so as to output first translated utterance information, a first output unitwhich conveys the first translated utterance information to a user, a second input accepting unitwhich accepts an utterance of the user, a second translation processing unitwhich translates the accepted utterance of the userinto the first language so as to output second translated utterance information, a second output unitwhich conveys the second translated utterance information to the user, an output time determination unit which analyzes a characteristic included in the utterance of the userand determines the upper limit for the translation time for an utterance to be accepted following the utterance of the first user. The second translation processing unitoutputs second translated utterance information acquired within such translation time.