AW: Face glyphs and Software that Transcribes Videos into SignWriting

Sun Aug 31 17:08:14 UTC 2014

He Valerie and friends, 

 “And Facial Expressions truly are based on a combination of what we see
and what we feel
”

Well – if it comes to SpeechWriting you have to add .. “and what we know” 

This is a very interesting aspect. When Erika did her research in our class
we learned a lot about what is going on and what is not going on in the mind
of a signer if he performs a sign with any kind of mouthing 

Same is true for us if we look at someone who is signing. 

 As the “informed”  person I can “lipread” .. as the “not informed” person
I may just see somebody moving his lips, tongue, 
 but have no idea what
kind of word from spoken language matches this kind of mouth-movements and
string of “Mundbilder” 

Nevertheless this aspect as a important aspect of a Sign Language
performance has been neglected in the past very much. When I started to
develop my SpeechWriting symbol set I had to understand that for some reason
other scribes do not want to include this part of information although you
can see it – smile. Obviously this seems to be a matter of “political
correctness” or something like that. While DGS has a lot of “mouthing” other
signl languages    seem to avoid that and accept only mouth gestures and
mimic? 

But if we try to write what we see ..it is so interesting that – coming from
different backgrounds - we do not see the same thing. – smile 

All best 

Stefan 

(Attached you see an animation with a man signing a sign name 
and
“mouthing”  Timo )

  _____  

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages
[mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU] Im Auftrag von Valerie Sutton
Gesendet: Sonntag, 31. August 2014 17:38
An: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
Betreff: Face glyphs and Software that Transcribes Videos into SignWriting

SignWriting List

August 31, 2014

Hello Maria, Fabrizio and Stefan -

I believe you are asking for corresponding photos or drawings that could be
placed side by side with each Facial Expression symbol in SignWriting?

There have been others who ask for this too, and we have considered doing
this, but the problem is that the human face is very different from person
to person, and I personally cannot even do all the facial expressions that
are possible to write in SignWriting. Most people can’t either ;-)

We have had some photos taken in the past to use in this way, but not
everyone could recognize in the photos exactly what the position was. This
proves one fact that I had to learn over time
we are not just writing what
we see
we are also writing what we feel, and what is considered necessary
facial expressions for the understanding of the signs
not all facial
expressions are needed. When you transcribe videos you need to know the
difference between the facial expressions that are needed and the facial
expressions that are not needed
that is not easy, with or without
automation.

SignWriting has many aspects. It is a handwriting. It is expressing signer’s
expression from their own perspective. That is the Expressive Viewpoint
which is our standard.

But as you know for a decade we wrote Receptively. I was given an
assignment, back in 1974, at the University of Copenhagen, to write what I
saw people sign (and gesture) on a videotape of both hearing and Deaf
people. The project was “writing the difference between hearing person’s
gestures, and the movements of Deaf people signing Danish Sign Language”
so
you can imagine the Deaf people were expressing their language and the
hearing people were supporting their spoken language with minimal
gestures
that was my beginning with writing signs and developing the
beginning of SignWriting and it was through that project that I realized
that the sign languages of the Deaf are real languages and it was clear that
the hearing people did not have a sign language, but were using gestures to
support their spoken language.

But being the hearing person I am (smile), I made the mistaken assumption
that when we started to write real sign languages, that we should write from
videotape and write exactly what we see
not feel. That came from the fact
that I did not know the languages I was writing from videotape. I felt I
could not impose my lack of knowledge on the writing, so I made a strong
rule that we just write what we see, and it was Receptive, from 1974 to
1984.

But Receptive writing is not the same as Expressive writing - there are
larger differences than most people realize
Later it was our Deaf staff,
Lucinda O’Grady and Meriam Ina Schroeder, who requested switching from
Receptive to Expressive in 1984, after three years writing articles in ASL
in the SignWriter Newspaper in the Receptive, they became fed up with
Receptive and demanded Expressive and I am glad they did!

They explained in a meeting in 1984 that they were really writing from their
own experience, and were not writing from videotape
and when we write
Expressively, which is the standard now, we write what we FEEL too
 My
immediate response was “what about Facial Expressions? how can we “see
Facial Expressions” if we are writing ourselves?” and Lucinda explained it
is what we “feel” while we are signing and writing that matters to a person
fluent in writing ASL...

Which brings us back to video transcription - Video transcription fits well
with Receptive, but nonetheless, most people I know use the Expressive to
transcribe video because sooner or later the transcript must be in the
Expressive for others to read... so most people write the videos in the
Expressive from the beginning

And Facial Expressions truly are based on a combination of what we see and
what we feel
so the photos you are needing are harder because not all facial
expression photos really portray what a person feels while they are signing

So here are my questions to you Maria and Fabrizio

1. Are you creating software that does an automatic transcription of sign
language videos into SignWriting?

2. What is the name of this new software so I can refer to it easier? ;-)

3. Are you developing the software to transcribe videos in the Recpetive or
the Expressive or both?

Val ;-)

-----------

On Aug 27, 2014, at 2:54 AM, Maria De Marsico <demarsico at DI.UNIROMA1.IT>
wrote:

Hi Stefan,

thanks for the quick feedback! I suppose we need the latter, since we would
like to create an application able to process any pre-recorded viedo ... or
almost any ;-)

Maria

2014-08-27 11:30 GMT+02:00 Stefan Wöhrmann <stefanwoehrmann at googlemail.com>:

Hi Maria, 

Are you looking for a match of symbols for “Woehrmann´s SpeechWriting” and a
picture how the mouth / face looks like or are you looking for all kinds of
facial expressions – tongue, eyebrows, eyes, cheecks, air in or air out,
teeth

All best 

Stefan 

Animation of performing a sign name  - the mouth moves as if saying: T I M O
(German way to pronounce the word ;-)) )

  _____  

Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages
[mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU] Im Auftrag von Maria De Marsico
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 27. August 2014 11:22
An: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
Betreff: Face glyphs

Dear all,
we are addressing the problem of transcribing signed videos in SignWriting.
Unfortunately, when automatically processing single frames, we cannot use
any previous knowledge of the content. For this reason, in oprder to
reliably reproduce face expresions through the corresponding glyphs, we
would need a kind og "glossary". i.e., a table of correspondence between
real face images and glyphs.

Do you know if something of this kind is already available?

Thanks!

Maria 

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maria De Marsico
Assistant professor
Sapienza University of Rome
Department of Computer Science 
Via Salaria 113 - 00198 Rome - Italy
email: demarsico at di.uniroma1.it
tel: +39 06 49918312

________________________________________________ 

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-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maria De Marsico
Assistant professor
Sapienza University of Rome
Department of Computer Science 
Via Salaria 113 - 00198 Rome - Italy
email: demarsico at di.uniroma1.it
tel: +39 06 49918312

________________________________________________ 

SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION 

Valerie Sutton SignWriting List moderator sutton at signwriting.org 

Post Messages to the SignWriting List: sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu 

SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist 

Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages
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<http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1> &A=1 

________________________________________________ 

SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION 

Valerie Sutton SignWriting List moderator sutton at signwriting.org 

Post Messages to the SignWriting List: sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu 

SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
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________________________________________________

SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION

Valerie Sutton
SignWriting List moderator
sutton at signwriting.org

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sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu

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