Natural language interfaces enable the user to communicatewith the computer in French, English, German, or a human 1language. Some applications of such interfaces are database queries, information retrieval from texts, so-called expert systems,and robot control. Current advances in recognition of spoken 2language improve the usability of many types of natural language systems. Communication with computers using spoken language willhave a lasted impact upon the work environment, completely new 3areas of application for information technology will open up.However, spoken language needs to be combined to other modes of 4communication such as pointing with mouse or finger. Because such 5multimodal communication is finally embedded in an effective general model of cooperation, we have succeeded in turning the machine to a partner. Much older than communication problems 6between human beings and machines are these between people with 7different mother tongues. One of the original aims of computational linguistics has always been fully automatic translation between human languages. From bitter experience scientists have realizedthat they are still far away from getting the ambitious goal of 8translating unrestricted texts. Nevertheless, they have been able to create software systems that simplify the work of human translators and clearly improve their productivity. Less than perfect automatictranslations can also be of a great help to information seekers who 9have to search for large amounts of texts in foreign languages. 10