SignWriting Receptive View

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
April 15, 2007

rocha at ATLAS.UCPEL.TCHE.BR wrote:

> Hi Valerie,
>
>   Yes, it is good to chat a little again here!
>
>   Just beautiful this captioning work! And one thing is clear to  
> me: it
> can show to any person that knows nothing about SW how easy it is to
> read it, and how faithful SW can be to sign languages.
>
>   Ah, maybe I was wrong about changing the indication of the  
> dominant hand
> when automatically going from expressive to receptive: it seems that
> just mirroring the image takes care of that.
>
>   All the best,
> Antônio Carlos


Hi Antonio Carlos!
Yes...I really like chatting again...feels like old times!

I hope you all are doing well in Brazil? I keep meaning to re-design  
our SignWriting web area on Brazil...it is sorely out of date...if  
nothing more just to link to some of the new work being done in  
Brazil today, which is considerable and quite impressive...

Regarding the possible programming of an automatic way to switch from  
Expressive to Receptive, it is a little complicated, because it is  
not a 100 per cent kind of thing...there are always small exceptions  
which make it very hard for programmers!

It is true that just mirroring does change the dominance of the right  
and left hands...

But just mirroring does not change the colors of the  
arrowheads...which also indicate the dominant hand in an indirect  
way...so there are still these criteria:

1. the image is mirrored
2. arrowheads change color
3. Forward Arrows and Back Arrows switch (including head movement,  
eyegaze and so forth...even mouth movement with lips projecting forward)
4. Palm facing for hands that are parallel to the floor switches  
(they are forward and back too, and that switches)
5. Sometimes some symbols are used in the Receptive that might not  
normally be chosen when writing Expressive...which comes from the  
fact that we are trying to fit with how Sign Languages look, as you  
mentioned above...but those can be pinned down and given to a  
programmer, so it is not impossible to program...

Once such criteria were established, then the person doing the switch  
will have to adjust the symbols slightly to fit together if some of  
the symbols change positioning because of the flopping etc...

Hope this information helps!

Val ;-)