An English-Japanese bi-directional machine translation system was connected to a keyboard conversation function on a workstation, and tested via a satellite link with users in Japan and Switzerland. The set-up is described, and some informal observations on the nature of the bilingual dialogues reported. particular we were struck by the amount of metadialogue, . dialogue discussing the previous interchanges: since contributions to the conversation were being translated, this metadialogue posed certain problems which we think are of general interest. .
