[sw-l] SWDB - Linguistic SignWriting Database

[rocha at ATLAS.UCPEL.TCHE.BR]

Sandy,

  Gladly to us, you read the schema wrongly :-)

  Translations can be in any number of sign languages (and any number of
oral languages too :-)

  And signs are identified sequentially by numbers. That is, they are not
identified by gloss, not even for basic search: signs have to be search
as signs.

  Sign languages treated as languages in themselves in context of
computational systems has been my major concern even before I met
SignWriting. By the way, that is the reason I started to search for
something like SignWriting, before I knew it :-)

  All the best,

  Antônio Carlos


> Antônio Carlos,
>
>>    We are calling it SWDB - Linguistic SignWriting Database (but we are
>> not sure yet this is the best name).
>>
>>    The SWML format, called SWDB, has been added to the SWML site
>>
>>       http://swml.ucpel.tche.br
>>
>> so you can check it. It's an XML schema, not a DTD, but it is shown as a
>> diagram. The diagram is in the PDF format.
>
> It's possible that I'm reading the schema wrongly, but if I'm reading it
> correctly I have a serious objection to it.
>
> It seems to assume that the sign language will have an oral language
> translation.
>
> Why shouldn't there be a linguistic database with translations to sign
> languages?
>
> For example an ASL database for BSL users who have poor English or don't
> want to work with English as a go-between for the two sign languages?
>
> This is something I've thought of before - at the moment glosses for use
> by
> editors and dictionary software are always in oral languages but it should
> be possible to supply sign language glosses for those who want to work
> directly from one sign language to another.
>
> This makes sense to me, as oral languages are quite "foreigh" to sign
> languages and only being able to work between a sign and oral language
> when
> trying to learn a foreign sign language seems to me like an English
> speaker
> trying to work with Dutch but only having a Dutch-Japanese and
> English-Japanese dictionary.
>
> In fact it's worse because imagine I wanted to access Brazilian Sign
> Language - I'd have to go through English and Portuguese to get at the
> Brazilian Sign Language instead of just going direct from British Sign
> Language to Brazilian!
>
> While not many people might want to produce an authoritative
> British-Brazilian SL dictionary, signers who want to learn or teach a
> foreign sign language should at least be able to set up a database like
> this
> for their own or classroom use. And how about researchers comparing sign
> languages?
>
> I hope either I've read the schema wrongly, or you or Juliano find this
> suggestion helpful!
>
> Sandy
>
>


-----------------------------
Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa
Escola de Informática - UCPel