Abstract Since adding background music and sound effects even to short animations is not simple, an automatic music generation system would help improve the total quality of computer generated animations. This paper describes a prototype system which automatically generates background music and sound effects for existing animations. The inputs to the system are music parameters (mood types and musical motifs) and motion parameters for individual scenes of an animation. Music is generated for each scene. The key for a scene is determined by considering the mood type and its degree, and the key of the previous scene. The melody for a scene is generated from the given motifs and the chord progression for the scene which is determined according to appropriate rules. The harmony accompaniment for a scene is selected based on the mood type. The rhythm accompaniment for a scene is selected based on the mood type and tempo. The sound effects for motions are determined according to the characteristics and intensity of the motions. Both the background music and sound effects are generated so that the transitions between scenes are smooth.

The results from applying the NHPP (non-homogeneous Poisson process) reliability growth model, for estimation of residual errors, to the online processing software which was developed for provision of new telecommunications services are presented. It is disclosed that the NHPP model can very well be applied to the real online processing telecommunications software not only in the testing phase but also in the operation phase. How the modeling method can be used in the life-cycle of software development, including design, development, and maintenance phases, is also discussed.>

This paper describes the outline of our Japanese to English machine translation system, which is supported by the Agency of Science and Technology of the Japanese Government. Many new methodologies are introduced to obtain high-quality translation results. The analysis is based on case grammar, which is suitable for a word-order-free language such as Japanese. The dictionary is rich enough to handle many specific expressions. It contains not only case frame information, but also semantic information, idiomatic expressions, and many others. In the transfer phase, the system applies many structural transformations, so that the structural difference of the same contents in Japanese and English can be relieved. In the generation phase, many structural transformations are again applied so that the ellipsis problems can be avoided, and that better stylistic expressions can be obtained. The system is running mainly for the abstracts of scientific and technical papers. The evaluation method of the translated results is also discussed, with many example translations.

A powerful grammar writing system has been developed. This grammar writing system is called GRADE (GRAmmar DEscriber). GRADE allows a grammar writer to write grammars including analysis, transfer, and generation using the same expression. GRADE has powerful grammar writing facility. GRADE allows a grammar writer to control the process of a machine translation. GRADE also has a function to use grammatical rules written in a word dictionary. GRADE has been used for more than a year as the software of the machine translation project from Japanese into English, which is supported by the Japanese Government and called Mu-project.

Analysis grammar of Japanese in the Mu-project is presented. It is emphasized that rules expressing constraints on single linguistic structures and rules for selecting the most preferable readings are completely different in nature, and that rules for selecting preferale readings should be utilized in analysis grammars of practical MT systems. It is also claimed that procedural control is essential in integrating such rules into a unified grammar. Some sample rules are given to make the points of discussion clear and concrete.