Abstract: Image data and natural language data indicating a visual impression of an image prepared based on the image data are correlated to each other and stored in the correlated form in the image database, and when retrieving an image using the retrieving section, natural language data indicating a text for retrieval is inputted from a natural language input section, and image data relating to natural language data having a common visual impression is extracted from the image database by collating the inputted natural language data to natural language data on the image database.

Abstract: The present invention comprises a Chinese character information outputting step for outputting Chinese character information corresponding to an input arbitrary character string by referring to a Chinese dictionary in which Chinese character information comprising a command and/or at least one Chinese character correlated to a character string. Chinese character information is received from the Chinese character information outputting step and the correlated Chinese character is displayed as a candidate for conversion in a list. The present invention includes a selecting step of selecting a desired Chinese character or a command from the Chinese character information displayed in the list and a determining step for determining which of a Chinese character and a command has been selected. The command is executed when a command has been selected and the input character string is replaced with Chinese characters displayed when it is determined in the determining step that a Chinese character has been selected.