Error Handling in Spoken Dialogue Systems August 28-31, 2003 Château d'Oex, Vaud, Switzerland

"Can you read this well?" Error Handling in a Translated Messaging Environment

Sherri Condon, Keith Miller

The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA, USA

This paper focuses on the behavior that users exhibit when faced with system errors in an instant messaging environment in which the system translates each user's messages into the language of the other participants. Messages were annotated to identify the strategies that participants adopt for managing their interaction, including strategies to repair and adapt to translation problems. Results show that participants employ high proportions of strategies that manage the interaction by explicitly referring to the ongoing communication. These results question the assumption that explicit verification strategies in dialogue systems are dispreferred because they require extra resources.

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Bibliographic reference.  Condon, Sherri / Miller, Keith (2003): ""Can you read this well?" Error handling in a translated messaging environment", In EHSD-2003, 65-70.