Antw: Re: Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 and the standardisation of sign languages

[Franz Dotter]

Dear colleagues!

I/we am/are also very interested in participating in a colloquium on the standardisation of sign languages. 
The situation in Austria is similar to that reported from other countries:

Some politicians reject all furtherances for sign language and even the installation of regular interpreting studies as long as the Austrian Sign Language is not standardised for certain purposes. In contrast to the solution in THe Netherlands I suppose that at least some of the politicians try to cause delay to the demands of deaf people by this strategy.

In any case, there is some truth in the demands and we should deal with them with respect to the linguistic identity of the sign language community.

We should also deal with the systems offered which promise to translate spoken/written languages to sign languages automatically (the latest is signtel, see below), signing avatars, etc. concerning the acceptance of such (imperfect!) aids for communication.

Best Regards

Franz


copy from signtel info

there is interesting new technology to help people who are deaf or hearing
impaired communicate with people who are not...

There is a press release at
http://www.icdri.org/signtel_interpreter_press_releas.htm 

and, the site can be found at www.signtelinc.com 

I have used it, it is pretty amazing and they are very easy folks to work
with and are looking for new ways to apply the technology.

Sincerely,

Mike Burks



University of Klagenfurt
Research Center for Sign Language and Communication of the Hearing Impaired
(of the Faculty for Cultural Sciences at the Department of Linguistics and Computational Linguistics)
Funded by: Bundessozialamt Kaernten, European Social Fund
Head: Franz Dotter
Collaborators: Elisabeth Bergmeister (deaf), Marlene Hilzensauer, Klaudia Krammer, Ingeborg Okorn (deaf), Reinhold Orter (deaf), Andrea Skant, Natialie Unterberger (deaf).
Homepage: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/fzgs
Deaf server (in German): http://deaf.uni-klu.ac.at
Fax: ++43 (0)463 2700 2899
Phone: ++43 (0)463 2700 /2821 (Franz Dotter), /2822 (Andrea Skant), /2823 (Marlene Hilzensauer), /2824 (Klaudia Krammer)
Email addresses: firstname.lastname at uni-klu.ac.at