Sign language corpora

Tue Sep 18 12:17:16 UTC 2007

Hurrah!
Anyone else out there composing a sign language corpus?
Cheers and good luck to all of you,
Inge

At 13:35 18-9-2007, you wrote:
>Here in Ireland, we have also been working on the development of a
>corpus of Irish Sign Language. Working on a shoestring budget, we have
>data for 40 signers from across Ireland (24 female, 16 male), aged
>18-70 plus years. Data was collected in 2004 and we have had a small
>but diligent team of annotaters working using ELAN and the ECHO
>project's conventions (and adapting them when we needed to) to create
>a tool that is proving invaluable in terms of research, but also
>teaching. The corpus includes self-selected narratives(i.e. the Deaf
>person decided what personal story they were happy to tell), versions
>of the Frog Story and Volterra et al's picture elicitation task. We
>would like to secure funding to enlarge our pool of data to include
>ISL signers from the north-west and Northern Ireland, a more robust
>representation of elderly signers, the inclusion of child signers, and
>the inclusion of dialogues.
>
>At present the Signs of Ireland corpus is not availalbe on the web,
>but we are exploring ways of sharing our data more widely.
>
>Lorraine
>
>
>
>On 18/09/2007, Adam C Schembri <a.schembri at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> > There are many of us who follow this particular 'gospel'. :-) I have
> > jokingly referred to it as the 'gospel according to Trevor and Ceil'. Ceil
> > Lucas and her colleagues were perhaps the first to systematically collect a
> > naturalistic corpus of sign language data balanced for
> > age/gender/region/ethnicity etc (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001), and Trevor
> > Johnston and colleagues were the first - to 
> my knowledge - to actually begin
> > to build a 'corpus' in the contemporary sense of the term (i.e., a
> > machine-readable, annotated collection of language recordings), filming 3
> > hour data collection sessions from 100 native and near-native signers in 5
> > regions across Australia. The NGT project has 
> taken this further by building
> > in web-accessibility of their corpus into their project, but I believe the
> > Australian team do hope to make the Auslan 
> corpus more widely available at a
> > later stage. Certainly, the new project that Inge refers to here in the UK
> > plans to do something similar to the NGT project ( for those of you who
> > don't know, my colleagues and I have just been awarded a major £1.2 million
> > grant from the Economic and Social Research Council for the 'British Sign
> > Language Corpus Project'. For more information, visit DCAL's news
> > page: http://www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk/news/news.html ).
> >
> > Adam
> >
> > Adam C Schembri, PhD
> > Senior Research Fellow
> > Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre
> > University College London
> > 49 Gordon Square
> > London WC1H0PD
> > United Kingdom
> > Tel: +44 20 7679 8680
> > http://www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk/team/adam_schembri.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 18 Sep 2007, at 08:04, I.E.P. Zwitserlood wrote:
> >
> > Talking about gospels: so it is ours!
> > In the Netherlands, at the Radboud University Nijmegen, a corpus is
> > currently being compiled for NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands). My
> > collegues and I aim at recording 75 hours of 
> elicited and (semi-)spontaneous
> > data, collected from 100 native signers. All video data, as well as a
> > translation and (for a small subset of the 
> data) an annotation, will be made
> > available on internet. (Similar projects have been/will be undertoken in
> > Australia, the UK and Ireland, although the data are not so easily
> > available). If anyone is interested in making a corpus for his/her sign
> > language, we'll be happy to inform/support you with our experiences. For
> > more information, see our website:
> > http://www.let.kun.nl/sign-lang/corpusngt/scientific/index.html
> >
> > Best,
> > Inge Zwitserlood
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com>
> > Date: Monday, September 17, 2007 6:30 pm
> > Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] An avator doing bfi
> >
> > Sorry, but I can't stop going on about corpora -- it's the gospel I preach
> > :-)
> >
> > Perhaps the best way to kick-start this is to round up all the usual
> > suspects, and get a governmental agency (US 
> or EU, it doesn't much matter to
> > me) to coordinate recording and transcribing 50 hours of data for everyone
> > to use (I know, it isn't enough  by spoken-language standards, but it's so
> > much more than we've ever had). Then we have a fighting chance of pushing
> > the state of the art in all these areas...
> >
> > -Dan.
> >
> >  Sorry, but I can't stop going on about corpora -- it's the gospel I preach
> > :-)
> >
> > Perhaps the best way to kick-start this is to round up all the usual
> > suspects, and get a governmental agency (US 
> or EU, it doesn't much matter to
> > me) to coordinate recording and transcribing 50 hours of data for everyone
> > to use (I know, it isn't enough  by spoken-language standards, but it's so
> > much more than we've ever had). Then we have a fighting chance of pushing
> > the state of the art in all these areas...
> >
> > -Dan.
> >
> > On 9/17/07, Sara Morrissey <sara.morrissey2 at mail.dcu.ie> wrote:
> > >
> > > Oh dear. Don't talk to me about corpora! I'm working in the arena of
> > Data-Driven Machine Translation and working 
> with people who have millions of
> > sentences for their spoken language translation in comparison to my 600 for
> > sign language work!! Finding parallel data within a closed domain is a
> > difficult task. Nevertheless progress is being made and results are
> > promising :)
> > >
> > > Thanks for your input :o)
> > > Sara
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 17/09/2007, Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > > I'm sure the one thing standing between the Tunisian Deaf Community and
> > achieving their potential is the lack of a signing avatar :-)  Still, it is
> > potentially cool research with good dividends, particularly if it means the
> > development of a real Tunisian SL dictionary (as opposed to the previous
> > effort, which was a glossary meant to contribute to the perennial Pan-Arab
> > SL movement), grammar, etc.
> > > >
> > > > A major chunk of the problem here rests with the lack of substantial
> > corpora of any kind, let alone parallel corpora.
> > > >
> > > > -Dan.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On 9/17/07, Sara Morrissey <sara.morrissey2 at mail.dcu.ie > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > 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
> > > > >
> > > > > ************************************
> > > > > Sara Morrissey,
> > > > > PhD Researcher,
> > > > > National Centre for Language Technology,
> > > > > School of Computing,
> > > > > Dublin City University,
> > > > > Dublin 9,
> > > > > Ireland.
> > > > > ***********************************
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On 15/09/2007, Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > > > > Sigh. Everytime some student on their Amazing Journey Of
> > Self-Discovery<tm> "reinvents" a piece of deaf-related technology
> > (datagloves for reading fingerspelling, signing avatars, etc.), some
> > ignorant journalist is ready to hail it as a breakthrough.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > This was put together in a few months 
> by a student intern. As far as
> > I can tell (those knowing BSL please look at 
> the video and correct me if I'm
> > wrong), this is yet another relatively straightforward marriage of speech
> > recognition and 3D animation. There's no 
> indication that space, classifiers,
> > etc. which would be part of a natural SL are being used here. As it stands,
> > it's less useful than commercially available speech-to-text systems
> > (DragonDictate, Via Voice, etc.)
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Don't surplus your interpreters just yet :-)
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Cheers,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > -Dan
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 9/15/07, GerardM < gerard.meijssen at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > > > I read this article on the BBC 
> website about a translation service
> > created by IBM that uses an avatar to translate into British Sign language
> > (bfi). Such technology could in principle also produce SignWriting
> > > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > >      Gerard
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993326.stm
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > SLLING-L mailing list
> > > > > > > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > > > > > >
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > SLLING-L mailing list
> > > > > > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > > > > >
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > SLLING-L mailing list
> > > > > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > > > >
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > SLLING-L mailing list
> > > > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > > >
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > SLLING-L mailing list
> > > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > >
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > SLLING-L mailing list
> > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > SLLING-L mailing list
> > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > SLLING-L mailing list
> > SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
> >
> >
>
>
>--
>Dr. Lorraine Leeson
>Director
>Centre for Deaf Studies
>School of Linguistics, Speech and Communication Sciences
>University of Dublin, Trinity College
>40 Lower Drumcondra Road
>Drumcondra, Dublin 9
>
>Tel: 01 830 11 66
>GSM: 087 66 700 28
>
>_______________________________________________
>SLLING-L mailing list
>SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l

_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l