Development of a sign language communication system between Japanese and Korean

In this paper, we propose a method of sign language communication between different languages using computer graphics (CG) animation. A CG animation system for representing sign languages was developed using MATLAB. We focused on translation between Japanese and Korean, since these two languages have several similarities. The sign languages used in Japan and Korea are also similar in several aspects. In the proposed system, translation from Japanese to Korean, or from Korean to Japanese, is conducted first, and then CG animations are generated from the translated text.