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<Paper uid="P95-1043">
  <Title>From route descriptions to sketches: a model for a text-to-image translator</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Computer text-image transcription has lately become a subject of interest, prompting research on relations between these two modes of representation and on possibilities of transition from one to the other. Different types of text and of images have been considered, for example: narrative text and motion pictures (Kahn, 1979; Abraham and Descl~s, 1992), spatial descriptions and 3-dimensional sketches (Yamada et al., 1992; Arnold and Lebrun, 1992), 2-dimensional spatial scenes and linguistic descriptions (Andr~ et al., 1987), 2-dimensional image sequences and linguistic reports (Andr~ et al., 1988).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Linguistic and pictorial modes may be considered as complementary since they are capable of conveying different kinds of content (Arnold, 1990). This complementarity of expression is explored in order to be used in multi-modal systems for human-computer interaction such as computer assisted architectural conception (Arnold and Lebrun, 1992). Such systems should not only use different modes to ensure better communication, but should also be able to pass from one to the other. Given the differences in capacities of these two means of expression, one may expect some problems in trying to encode into a picture the information contained in a linguistic description.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The present research is concerned with route descriptions (RDs) and their translation into 2-dimensional graphic sketches. We deal with a type of discourse whose informational content may seem quite easy to represent in a graphic mode. In every-day communication situations, verbal RDs are often accompanied by sketches, thus participating in a 2mode representation. A sketch can also function as a route representation by itself.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> We will first outline some problems that may appear while translating descriptions into graphics.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Then we will describe our general model for an automatic translator and some aspects of the underlying knowledge representation.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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