query: computer assisted sign language teaching

[Inge Zwitserlood]

Hi Asli,

Try http://www.visicast.sys.uea.ac.uk/ for information on computer
translation of English to sign language (BSL, DGS and NGT respectively).
(The main information page is slightly out of date, but you can get an idea
and references there). For info on a signing tutor, you can also directly
contact Hortensia Popescu at the University of Hamburg:
Hortensia.Popescu at sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de

Good luck!
Inge Zwitserlood


At 14:42 10-10-02 -0700, you wrote:
> Dear all,
>Can anyone   direct me to  a website or researchers who work  on    computer
>assisted sign  language teaching technologies ?
>Thanks a lot !!
>Asli Ozyurek
>Department  of psychology
>Koc University
>Istanbul
>Turkey
>
>"Angus B. Grieve-Smith" 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.
>>
>>         I have to say I'm genuinely disappointed.  I actually believed
>> that they were really doing some kind of translation.  I should have known
>> something was up when I emailed them and the guy said that they hadn't
>> published anything in peer-reviewed journals because they wanted to patent
>> the technology first.
>>
>>         What bugs me is that they found some people at the Texas School
>> for the Deaf to go "wow!" and put it on their testimonials page.
>> Apparently it's being discussed on a list in Colorado.  I wonder how many
>> companies, schools and government agencies are going to cough up $4000 for
>> it.
>>
>>         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...
>>
>> --
>>                                 -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>>                                 Linguistics Department
>>                                 University of New Mexico
>>                                 grvsmth at unm.edu
>

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Inge Zwitserlood, UiL OTS
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inge.zwitserlood at let.uu.nl     izjo at knoware.nl
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