Antw: Aberdeen MT system

[Franz.Dotter at UNI-KLU.AC.AT]

Dear colleagues,
 
After having read the news text and other sources on PSLT, I suppose
that this system tries to identify single handshapes in isolated
production as "signs" (there is nowhere a notice concerning movement,
but it maybe included?). As we had some years ago a similar sensational
message which turned out that the software could recognise the finger
alphabet letters, my associative interpretation is: These colleagues
have adopted the idea of recognising finger alpahbet letters and
expanded it to a (how much limited?) system where any user can "teach"
new signs to the system.
My inpression is that the Scottish colleagues don't cope with syntax,
neither with the coarticulative change of signs but believe in "sign
language is a langaue where the single signs are produced separatedly
(i.e. with some pause/release between) one after the other without such
"disturbances" like syntax.
 
Moreover, the text of the announcement contains some very doubtful
passages like:
"BSL is however, a general-purpose language and therefore poses
limitations for users, making it impossible for them to easily express
certain concepts and terms that are very specific or used only within
particular areas of society – for example education and the workplace.

To overcome this, PSLT enables users to personalise sign language to
their own individual needs.
Dr Compatangelo continued: “One of the most innovative and exciting
aspects of the technology, is that it allows sign language users to
actually develop their own signs for concepts and terms they need to
have in their vocabulary, but they may not have been able to express
easily when using BSL."
The colleagues should be asked  how many lexical items a sign language
has in their opinion. If I'm right with my suspicion, they may be
surprised by the fact that SLs may contain several thousands of signs.
To recognise somehow defined isolated hand gestures or similar, may
have a positive impact on the inclusion of SL users in the heraing
society, but the developers should be honest about the limits of their
system.
 
Best Regards
Franz Dotter
 


>>> "Dan Parvaz" <dparvaz at GMAIL.COM> 3/13/2012 12:24 >>>
Has anyone seen the system mentioned in the URL below? And has there
been 
any systematic testing of this Machine Translation system which,
according to 
_The Scotsman_, would "dramatically change the lives of more than
50,000 users 
of British Sign language whose communication would be 'immediately
translated 
into text which can be read by the person they are conversing with'"?

(Be that as it may, I haven't seen Spanish MT dramatically change the
far greater 
number of Spanish-speakers in the US, but that may just be me being
grumpy)

Just curious.

Cheers,

-Dan

PS: Here's the URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-
news/9134827/Sign-language-program-converts-hand-movements-into-text.html
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