Sign language corpora

Tue Sep 18 07:04:30 UTC 2007

Talking about gospels: so it is ours! 
In the Netherlands, at the Radboud University Nijmegen, a corpus is currently being compiled for NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands). My collegues and I aim at recording 75 hours of elicited and (semi-)spontaneous data, collected from 100 native signers. All video data, as well as a translation and (for a small subset of the data) an annotation, will be made available on internet. (Similar projects have been/will be undertoken in Australia, the UK and Ireland, although the data are not so easily available). If anyone is interested in making a corpus for his/her sign language, we'll be happy to inform/support you with our experiences. For more information, see our website: 
http://www.let.kun.nl/sign-lang/corpusngt/scientific/index.html

Best,
Inge Zwitserlood

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, September 17, 2007 6:30 pm
Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] An avator doing bfi

Sorry, but I can't stop going on about corpora -- it's the gospel I preach :-)

Perhaps the best way to kick-start this is to round up all the usual suspects, and get a governmental agency (US or EU, it doesn't much matter to me) to coordinate recording and transcribing 50 hours of data for everyone to use (I know, it isn't enough  by spoken-language standards, but it's so much more than we've ever had). Then we have a fighting chance of pushing the state of the art in all these areas... 

-Dan.

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Sorry, but I can't stop going on about corpora -- it's the gospel I preach
:-)

Perhaps the best way to kick-start this is to round up all the usual
suspects, and get a governmental agency (US or EU, it doesn't much matter to
me) to coordinate recording and transcribing 50 hours of data for everyone
to use (I know, it isn't enough  by spoken-language standards, but it's so
much more than we've ever had). Then we have a fighting chance of pushing
the state of the art in all these areas...

-Dan.

On 9/17/07, Sara Morrissey <sara.morrissey2 at mail.dcu.ie> wrote:
>
> Oh dear. Don't talk to me about corpora! I'm working in the arena of
> Data-Driven Machine Translation and working with people who have millions of
> sentences for their spoken language translation in comparison to my 600 for
> sign language work!! Finding parallel data within a closed domain is a
> difficult task. Nevertheless progress is being made and results are
> promising :)
>
> Thanks for your input :o)
> Sara
>
>
> On 17/09/2007, Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm sure the one thing standing between the Tunisian Deaf Community and
> > achieving their potential is the lack of a signing avatar :-)  Still, it is
> > potentially cool research with good dividends, particularly if it means the
> > development of a real Tunisian SL dictionary (as opposed to the previous
> > effort, which was a glossary meant to contribute to the perennial Pan-Arab
> > SL movement), grammar, etc.
> >
> > A major chunk of the problem here rests with the lack of substantial
> > corpora of any kind, let alone parallel corpora.
> >
> > -Dan.
> >
> >
> >
> > On 9/17/07, Sara Morrissey <sara.morrissey2 at mail.dcu.ie > wrote:
> > >
> > > 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:
> > > http://www.ideal-ist.net/Countries/TN/PS-TN-1590 Well, I hope so at
> > > least, I've applied for a postdoc position with them!!
> > >
> > > 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)
> > >
> > > Namaste,
> > > Sara
> > >
> > > ************************************
> > > Sara Morrissey,
> > > PhD Researcher,
> > > National Centre for Language Technology,
> > > School of Computing,
> > > Dublin City University,
> > > Dublin 9,
> > > Ireland.
> > > ***********************************
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On 15/09/2007, Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > 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.
> > > >
> > > > 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.)
> > > >
> > > > Don't surplus your interpreters just yet :-)
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >
> > > > -Dan
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >  On 9/15/07, GerardM < gerard.meijssen at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > 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
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > >      Gerard
> > > > >
> > > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6993326.stm
> > > > >
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> > > > >
> > > >
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> > >
> > >
> > > --
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