TheInternationalConferenceTSD 2005 the8theventin theseriesonText Speech and Dialogue which
originated in 1998 presented state-of-the-art technology and recent achievements in the ?eld
of natural language processing. It declared its intent to be an interdisciplinary forum
intertwining research in speech and language processing with its applications in everyday
practice. We feel that the mixture of different approaches and applications offered a great
opportunity to get acquainted with the current act- ities in all aspects of language
communication and to witness the amazing vitality of researchers from developing countries too.
The ?nancial support of the ISCA (Inter- tional Speech Communication Association) enabled the
wide attendance of researchers from all active regions of the world.
Thisyear'sconferencewaspartiallyorientedtowardsmulti-modalhuman-computer interaction (HCI)
which can be seen as the most attractive topic of HCI at the present time. In this way we are
involved in a rich complex of communicative activity facial expressions hand gestures
direction of gaze to name but the most obvious ones. The interpretationof each user
utterancedependson the context prosody facial expressions (e. g. brows raised brows and gaze
both raised) and gestures. Hearers have to adapt to the speaker (e. g. maintainingthe theme of
the conversation smiling etc. ). Research into the interaction of these channels is however
limited often focusing on the interaction between a pair of channels. Six signi?cant scienti?c
results achieved in this area in the USA Japan Switzerland Germany The Netherlands and the
Czech Republic were presented by keynote speakers in special plenary sessions. Further approx.
