An example-based framework produces an output sentence by mimicking the closest translation example to an input sentence.

The semantic distance from the input is calculated for all examples. Then, the example closest to the input is chosen, and the target expression of that example is extracted.

The distance between an input and a translation example is measured in terms of a thesaurus hierarchy.

The Consortium for Speech Translation Advanced Research (C-Star) emerged from originally informal bilateral collaborations between research labs interested in Automatic Translation of Spoken Language.
The consortium became official in 1991and included the founding members:

ATR Interpreting Telephony Laboratories (Kyoto, Japan), Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), University of Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany), and Siemens AG (Munich, Germany).
We demonstrated in 1993 for the first time to the public that speech translation over international telecommunication is possible.

C-Star 2

The second phase of C-Star ended in summer 1999.
We celebrated the event conducting a large International Demonstration.