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From:
Fernando Capovilla Date: Sun Nov 29, 1998 9:57 pm Subject: translation from spoken Spanish to SW, and from SW to spoken-written Portuguese | |
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> Assunto: Automatic translation > Data: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 16:23:39 -0500 > De: Carlos Thompson > > My name is Carlos and I'm working in a R&D group in Colombia, where we > are planing to make an automatic machine (computer) translator from > Spoken Spanish into Colombian Sign Language (LSC for short). At this > momoent we are award of the lots of difficulties this project has to > pass throw and one of those is the final representation of the LSC. > > As I've seen SignWriting is an option for the output of LSC, as well as > digitalized video and rendered animations are. > > Other problems we are fasing are the translation itself, and the speech > recognizion. This is an ambitious project and I would like to know if > anybody knows on any think that could help us into this research we > would thank you. > Hi, Carlos.Here in Brazil we have been working in the opposite problem: a translation system from SignWriting into spoken-written Portuguese (as opposed to from spoken Spanish to SignWriting), but even so I think that our experience may be of some relevance to you. Your problem seems a bit more difficult, because you would need to deal with voice recognition systems. Over the last four years we have filmed, digitized, drawn and scanned 3500 signs from Brazilian Signed Language (BrSL, for short). Each sign has been drawn in stages so as to obtain graphic animation effects. In our multimedia network system, BrSL signs may be selected via touch sensitive screen. For the severely handicapped deaf, we have adapted automatic scanning and selection via devices sensitive to eye blink or air puff. When a sign is selected, its correponding digitized voice sounds and its corresponding glossy is printed in both Portuguese and English (we intend to add Spanish now with the advent of our MercoSul). We have also been working in the translation from BrSL to ASL, and have done great progress with that too. Thus, a Brazilian deaf with a spinal cord injury will be able to express his our her thoughts even to a foreigner blind, and will be able to converse with American deaf friends, even though one may not be familiar with the other's sign language. We also have great netware multimedia systems for the cerebral-palsied, the alexic, the agraphic, the aphasic, and so on. We have screened BrSL for iconic signs in order to build a hierarchy of iconicity that is going to help us in rehabilitation programs devoted to restoring signing in aphasic deaf people. Now we are working on a dictionary (both printed and in CD) of animated BrSL signs that brings not only the corresponding glossy and spoken word, but also the SignWriting notation. We hope it will help with the documentation of BrSL as well as with the spread of SW in Brazil, as a tool for our planned literacy projects using SW. Our communication system permits the simultaneous use of a number of different sign and symbol systems (such as SignWriting, life-like signs from BrSL and from ASL, symbols from Johnson's PCS, from Maharaj's PIC, from Blissymbols for the cerebral palsied, etc.) selected from different image and voice banks. Thus a deaf cerebral palsied person may select signs from the sign language used in his or her own deaf community, and have them translated into different symbol sets used by another important reference group of his: the cerebral-palsied hearing friends. Perhaps sharing this Brazilian experience may be of some help, I hope. Good luck for you and your Colombian team in your interesting project. Fernando. ------------------------------------------------------- Fernando C. Capovilla, Ph.D. Cognitive Neuropsycholinguistics & Rehabilitation Lab University of Sao Paulo, Institute of Psychology, PSE |
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