More on the SignTel Interpreter

[Mark A. Mandel]

Angus wrote:

>>>>>
        SignTel (www.signtelinc.com) has put more information up on their
web site -- see the FAQ page in particular.  It turns out there's no
translation whatsoever involved -- it's just concatenative synthesis
combined with a speech recognizer.  But they have an option that strips
out all the grammatical content, 'cause you know, ASL users enjoy that.
And they imply that subsequent versions will produce ASL, as though that's
a minor add-on, like mail merge or something.

     [...]

        Another thing I noticed is that they got an endorsement from the
"International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet."  This
center apparently collects "best practices in areas related to disability
and accessibility issues."  Maybe someone should tell them that any "best
practice" relating to sign linguistics has to use a true sign language...
<<<<<

You said it! And you're as well qualified to do it as anyone else, so
you're nominated.

                  Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist
 Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company : speech recognition
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com