<div>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:
<a href="http://www.ideal-ist.net/Countries/TN/PS-TN-1590">http://www.ideal-ist.net/Countries/TN/PS-TN-1590</a> Well, I hope so at least, I've applied for a postdoc position with them!!</div>
<div> </div>
<div>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)
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Namaste,</div>
<div>Sara</div>
<div> </div>
<div>************************************</div>
<div>Sara Morrissey,</div>
<div>PhD Researcher,</div>
<div>National Centre for Language Technology,</div>
<div>School of Computing,</div>
<div>Dublin City University,</div>
<div>Dublin 9,</div>
<div>Ireland.</div>
<div>***********************************</div>
<div><br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 15/09/2007, <b class="gmail_sendername">Dan Parvaz</b> <<a href="mailto:dparvaz@gmail.com">dparvaz@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">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.
<br><br>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.)
<br><br>Don't surplus your interpreters just yet :-)<br><br>Cheers,<br><span class="sg"><br>-Dan<br><br><br></span>
<div>
<div><span class="e" id="q_1150ae9cdcd4662f_3"><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/15/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">GerardM</b> <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com" target="_blank">
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<div><span class="e" id="q_1150ae9cdcd4662f_5">Hoi,<br>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
<br>Thanks, <br> Gerard<br><br><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993326.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993326.stm</a><br>
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