The generation of texts from pictures and formal specifications is a comparatively new field; it arose about ten years ago. Some useful applications of this task have been found in recent years. Among them are multimedia systems that require a text-generating subsystem to illustrate the pictures through textual explanations. These subsystems produce coherent texts, starting from the features of the pictures.
Another very important application of systems of this kind is the generation of formal specifications in text form from quite formal technical drawings.
For example, compilation of a patent formula for a new device, often many pages long, is a boring, time-consuming, and error-prone task for a human. This task is much more suitable for a machine.
A specific type of such a system is a multilingual text generating system. In many cases, it is necessary to generate descriptions and instructions for a new device in several languages, or in as many languages as possible.
Due to the problems discussed in the section on translation, the quality of automatic translation of a manually compiled text is often very low.
Better results can be achieved by automatic generation of the required text in each language independently, from the technical drawings and specifications or from a text in a specific formal language similar to a programming language.
Text generating systems have, in general, half of the linguistic problems of a translation system, including all of the linguistic problems connected with the grammar and lexicon of the target language. This is still a vast set of linguistic information, which is currently available in adequate detail for only a few very narrow subject areas.