The Text, Speech and Dialogue (TSD) Conference 2002, it should be noticed, is now being held for the ?fth time and we are pleased to observe that in its short history it has turned out to be an international forum successfully intertwining the basic ?elds of NLP. It is our strong hope that the conference contributes to a better understanding between researchers from the various areas and promotes more intensive mutual cooperation. So far the communication between man and computers has displayed a one-way nature, humans have to know how the - chines work and only then can they "understand"...