. HowNet and its computation of meaning Prof. Zhendong Dong Linguistic Knowledge Dept, Computer & Language Information Research Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences , China . Summary The talk may be taken as the extract of my new book "HowNet and the Computation of meaning" which is to be published in March. The talk gives a panoramic picture of HowNet as a knowledge system, presenting its data structure of Chinese/English words and expressions, and its hierarchical taxonomies of sememes. The talk demonstrates through HowNet's browser various kinds of relations among concepts computed on the basis of concept definitions. The demonstration of the two HowNet-based tools, Concept Similarity Computation (CSC) and Concept Relevance Computation (CRC) further proves the usefulness of sememes in meaning computation. The talk reviews the extraction of sememes in the development of HowNet and discusses the success in the scheme of sememes (or primitives). A comparison between HowNet and WordNet is made through the talk, thus the talk shows that HowNet is featured by a strong computer-orientation. . Bio   Director (2001- ) Linguistic Knowledge Dept,   Computer & Language Information Research Centre,   Chinese Academy of Sciences PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS:   Associate Professor (1964-1981 ） English Department, Heilongjiang University Senior Research Member (1981-1989) Head of Machine Translation Group, Academy of Military Science, People's Liberation Army Technical Leader (1986-1990) National MT R&D Project in 7 th 5-year plan Technical Leader (1990-1992) National Chinese information processing project   -- 905 Platform in 8 th 5-year plan Technical Leader of China (1986-1990) Japan 's ODA Five-country MT R&D project Research Manager (1992-1993) Language System Institute, Japan Member, Research Staff (1993-1997) Institute of Systems Science (ISS), National University of Singapore Managing director (1990 - ) Chinese Information Processing Society of China (CIPS) ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS AND AWARDS: Army Science and Technology Award for KY-1 English-Chinese MT System (1988) National Science and Technology Award for KY-1 English-Chinese MT System (1989) Electronic Ministry Science and Technology Award for Transtar MT System (1991)