sign language parsing

[G Sapountzaki]

Dear Angus,

At last this is an answer I was expecting on the subject! It was my own
initial response to the project, admittedly subjective and emotionally
tense. I think today not many people are so naive as to 'pass off to
the entire population of Greek shoolchildren machine translated
language as an example of fluent Greek Sign Language' as you kindly
note. There are all sorts of colours in the rainbow, and technology is
a bigger and bigger part of our everyday life. As a linguist I may have
my preferences on my way of working, and educators may have their own
as well. On the other hand there are people who don't see animated sign
trnaslation as a dilemma of the type 'which *single* way of linguistic
input and instruction should someone use?'. I think it is more positive
to combine ways so that they match each individual's needs. The project
in question has a target population of students who can be isolated in
hearing environments or (typically for Greece) in islands, for example,
and might benefit from even a web-based platform of animated signs,e.g.
for the instances when the teacher does not sign very well, or when the
student needs to learn some basic structures in GSL, in the way hearing
students learn Greek grammar with examples.

Closing, I am just noting that in Greece Greek Sign language is
recognized by law and there is an ever increasing number of Deaf
schoolteachers who are the real models of the fluent Greek Sign
language.

In any case,I appreciate your insights on the subject; I agree that if
someone asked me to choose one way of ever seeing signs again, I would
not choose machine translation, if this is the point!

Sincerely,
Galini Sapountzaki


>         I'm still trying to figure out why you need machine
> translation to
> store some Greek Sign Language sentences.  Is the idea to have a
> human
> translate them into a spoken language (presumably Greek, but Bengali
> would
> make almost as much sense) and then have the software automatically
> translate them every time they need to be displayed?  Why not just
> store
> them in written Greek Sign Language?
>
>         Machine translation has made very slow progress over the
> years.
> It is still clunky and unnatural, and it would be doing a disservice
> to
> the entire population of Greek schoolchildren to pass the output of
> a
> machine translation program off as an example of fluent Greek Sign
> Language.  You wouldn't teach the kids English entirely through this
> website (http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/Translate), I hope?
>
>                                         -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>                                         Linguistics Department
>                                         University of New Mexico
>                                         grvsmth at unm.edu
>                                         grvsmth at panix.com
>
>