TC-STAR is envisioned as a long- term effort focused on advanced research in all core technologies for speech-to-speech translation (SST): speech recognition, speech translation and speech synthesis. The objectives of the project are extremely ambitious: making a breakthrough in SST research to significantly reduce the gap between human and machine performance. The focus will be on the development of new, possibly revolutionary, algorithms and methods, integrating relevant human knowledge which is available at translation time into a data-driven framework. TC-STAR is planned for a duration of six years.

The first three years will target a selection of unconstrained conversational speech domains -i.e. broadcast news and speeches - and a few languages: native and non- native European English, European Spanish and Chinese. The second three years, will target more complex unconstrained conversational speech domains and European languages. Key actions will be: (i) the implementation of an evaluation infrastructure, (ii) the creation of a technological infrastructure, and (iii) the support of knowledge dissemination.