Natural Language Processing (NLP)

``Natural'' languages are human languages, such as English, German, or Chinese.

• Understanding text (in machine-readable form).

  
  What customers ordered widgets in May?
  

• Understanding continuous speech: perception as well as language understanding.

• Language generation (written or spoken).

• Machine translation, e.g., German to English:[METAL system, University of Texas Linguistics Research Center.]

  
  Vor dem Headerfeld befindet sich eine
  Praeambel von 42 Byte Laenge fuer den
  Ausgleich aller Toleranzen.
  -->
  A preamble of 42 byte length for the
  adjustment of all tolerances is found
  in front of the header field.