Natural language front-ends to database management systems represent a major improvement in accessibility for non-expert users. Unfortunately, such interfaces usually require extensive customizing not only of the front-end, but also of the data manager and hence of the DBMS itself. Developing such customized systems represents a huge investment of time and resources. In the 1980s, research has centered on making such systems portable at least across data bases, and in some cases across data base management systems. This report describes an architecture for complete transportability with minimal reprogramming, which has been partially implemented in a prototype system called TIPS. The TIPS architecture is compared briefly with other recent architectures, with attention to ease of portability, amount and locus of reprogramming needed, and extent of coverage both linguistically and in terms of database operations.