In contrast to the latest progress in speech recognition, the state-of-the-art in natural language generation for spoken language dialog systems is lagging behind. The core dialog managers are now more sophisticated; and natural-sounding and flexible output is expected, but not achieved with current simple techniques such as template-based systems. Portability of systems across subject domains and languages is another increasingly important requirement in dialog systems. This paper presents an outline of LEGEND, a system that is both portable and generates natural-sounding output. .
