Speech translation: coupling of recognition and translation

In speech translation, we are faced with the problem of how to couple the speech recognition process and the translation process. Starting from the Bayes decision rule for speech translation, we analyze how the interaction between the recognition process and the translation process can be modelled. In the light of this decision rule, we discuss the already existing approaches to speech translation. None of the existing approaches seems to have addressed this direct interaction. We suggest two new methods, the local averaging approximation and the monotone alignments.