SignWriting List Forum| Message 1562 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] | Message Index |
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From:
"Wayne H.Smith" Date: Sun Jul 4, 1999 9:19 am Subject: Re: SW Dictionary Project 2000 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Valerie and everybody else - Thanks for your long explanation about dictionary files. Yes, I do use the dictionary function a lot - virtually all the time - but let me correct another misinterpretation that I think you're getting. Although I have on occasion used the ASL dictionary (SW001), the dictionary I am referring to is the Taiwan SL dictionary (SW886) which I am establishing based on the "standardized" video tapes of the lessons that are being written for the TSL interpreter training program. I am right-handed, and as I mentioned that is the default, but I was being sensitive to my friend of twenty-five years, Chu Hsihsiung, who is left-handed and who signs (and draws) all signs from the left-handed perspective (and he is hardly the only left-handed signer in Taiwan). I think that it will take a while before a large group of people in the Deaf community of Taiwan will be typing signs directly, that's why I feel that as an intermediate step I'll need to prepare a "standardized" TSL dictionary WITH NAMES IN CHINESE CHARACTERS. That's why I keep talking about Chinese characters: so that Deaf people in Taiwan will be able to use the dictionary features right away and type whole sentences from Day 1. Of course, with time they can learn to type signs directly. You noted in your response: >In regards to typing SignWriting....Typists need to develop the typing >skills of typings signs directly into documents, without relying too >heavily on dictionaries for the spellings. When we type English to each >other in these email messages, we are not copying every single word from a >dictionary into our document - we are typing directly and spelling each >word ourselves. And you can do that with SignWriting too. My only comment is that although we do not copy English words from some kind of dictionary in typing e-mail messages, etc. we are using a "standard spelling" that is found where?... in a dictionary. I envision the TSL dictionary as being some kind of "standard spelling" for each TSL sign, based on the videotapes that I am working from which we decided upon by the Deaf community here and recorded by Deaf members of that community. To date, no one has attempted to learn to type SW (we just got the program 2 months ago) and people in Taiwan have never even seen anything like it before, so it's going to take a while. Gotta run! - Wayne | ||||||||||||||||||||
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