This book surveys the cutting edge of Human Language Technology (HLT) as it stood in the mid-1990s. It provides a comprehensive overview of the field, detailing the state of the art in areas such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, natural language understanding, and machine translation. The work aims to consolidate knowledge and present the foundational concepts and challenges within HLT for researchers and practitioners.

This survey is regarded as a valuable snapshot of the Human Language Technology field at a pivotal time. It consolidates research from various sub-disciplines, offering a broad perspective for those entering the field or seeking to understand its historical trajectory. The collection of papers provides foundational knowledge and highlights the key challenges and research avenues that were prominent in the mid-1990s. Its value lies in its comprehensive overview of the state of the art prior to more recent deep learning advancements.