An avator doing bfi

[Kathy H.]

Dear Sara and Others,
 
I'm working on a long-term project that begins with a phonemic representation of signing and ends with computer-generated sign animations.  
Currently, I have contrastive information on the movements of American Sign Language (ASL), which a Filemaker Pro database can convert (via my scripting) into phonetic information.  
 
I'm working on the non-movement portion now, as well as fine-tuning some areas of the movements.  I haven't found the "key" to the non-movement portion yet; I'm plodding along until I get that breakthrough.  It happened with the movement portion, so I expect it will happen one day with the non-movement portion.  
 
After both movements and non-movements can be represented phonemically (where the abstract phonemes only capture information that is contrastive to that language), then I will move on to converting the phonetic information into more physiological forms, at which point a computer animation expert would need to take over. 
 
Translation will be the step after that.  
This project is not "related to other work", as stated below; it is the main project that I am working on.  
 
Just adding my two cents to the topic.
 
Sincerely,
Kathy Hansen
 


Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:10:09 +0100From: sara.morrissey2 at mail.dcu.ieTo: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.eduSubject: Re: [SLLING-L] An avator doing bfi
All work in this area is a long way from being a translation service, I can assure you of that following 3 years PhD research on the topic of Machine Translation of Sign Languages. Sadly most of the work that I've come across in this area is similar to the work described in the BBC article in that it is just a small project. I have seen very little consistant work in this area with most of it being satellite projects related to other work so it never gets very far. Also, sadly, many groups that work in this area have little to no knowledge of the languages they are dealing with and often little contact with Deaf communities or colleagues and are more interested in the computing aspects.  I am aware of the forthcoming FP7 project which does seem to intend spending a few years of research in this area: http://www.ideal-ist.net/Countries/TN/PS-TN-1590 Well, I hope so at least, I've applied for a postdoc position with them!!
 
I'd be interested in hearing anyone's opinion on both this project and any other sign language machine translation projects they've come across. I intend to continue working in this area so all input is valuable :o) 
 
Namaste,
Sara
_________________________________________________________________
Gear up for Halo® 3 with free downloads and an exclusive offer. It’s our way of saying thanks for using Windows Live™.
http://gethalo3gear.com?ocid=SeptemberWLHalo3_WLHMTxt_2
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20070917/b279cc53/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l