Mailman - a Multilingual Speech-only E-mail Client Based on an Adaptive Speech Application Framework

In this paper we introduce Mailman (Postimies), a multilingual speech-based e-mail client. We discuss the most critical and interesting problems found in the domain of multilingual e-mail, such as the problematic presentation of structured elements in a multilingual context, and introduce solutions to them. We also present how our speech application development framework Jaspis, on which Mailman is heavily based, can provide support for multilingual applications. We also give examples of what we have learned from the development of Mailman and its experimental usage. Our current work deals mainly with multilingual speech outputs, but we also introduce how multilingual speech inputs and dialog management are supported in Jaspis and how they are going to be utilized in Mailman.