This paper introduce the NTCIR workshop , a series of evalution workshops, which are designed to enhance research in information retrieval and related text-processing techniques, such as summarizatino adn extraction. by providing large-scale test collections and a forum for researchers. The paper give a brief history of the Workshop, describes the tasks, participants, test collection and CLIR evaluation at the second workshop, and discusses the plans for the third workshop in conculusion, some thorughts on future directions are suggested