A prototype Greek text to Greek Sign Language conversion system

In this article, a prototype Greek text to Greek Sign Language (GSL) conversion system is presented. The system is integrated into an educational platform that addresses the needs of teaching GSL grammar and was developed within the SYNENNOESE project (Efthimiou et al. 2004a. Developing an e-learning platform for the Greek sign language. In: K. Miesenberger, J. Klaus, and W. Zagler, eds. Computer helping people with special needs, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, vol. 3118, 1107–1113). The detailed implementation of the language-processing component of a Greek text to GSL conversion system is provided, focusing upon the inherent problems of knowledge elicitation of sign language (SL) grammar and its implementation within a parser framework. It is based on an SL dictionary (Efthimiou et al. 2004a) database of coded GSL knowledge. The proposed system has been designed and implemented after considering most state-of-the-art SL machine translation or Conversion systems, such as Vsigns (Papadogiorgaki et al. 2004. VSigns – a virtual sign synthesis web tool. In: Proceedings of Sixth COST 276 Workshop on Information and Knowledge Management for Integrated Media Communication, May 2004, Thessaloniki, Greece), ZARDOZ (Veale et al. 1998. The challenges of cross-modal translation: English to sign language translation in the ZARDOZ system. Machine Translation, 13, 81–106) and SignSynth (Angus 2001. SignSynth: a sign language synthesis application using Web3D and Perl. In: Gesture and Sign Lanauage in Human–Computer Interaction. London, UK: International Gesture Workshop), and taking into account their advantages and disadvantages. The overall architecture is innovative since other existing systems either do not consider the GSL or they cannot be effectively applied on sentences but just on single words. The system is demonstrable on any conventional PC.

[1]  Stelios Piperidis,et al.  Multi-level XML-based Corpus Annotation , 2002, LREC.

[2]  Jong-Woo Lee,et al.  A comparative study on the sign-language communication systems between Korea and Japan through 2D and 3D character models on the Internet , 1999, Proceedings 1999 International Conference on Image Processing (Cat. 99CH36348).

[3]  Kostas Karpouzis,et al.  Educational resources and implementation of a Greek sign language synthesis architecture , 2007, Comput. Educ..

[4]  Wen Gao,et al.  HandTalker II: a Chinese sign language recognition and synthesis system , 2004, ICARCV 2004 8th Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision Conference, 2004..

[5]  Richard Kennaway,et al.  Synthetic Animation of Deaf Signing Gestures , 2001, Gesture Workshop.

[6]  Wen Gao,et al.  Large-Vocabulary Continuous Sign Language Recognition Based on Transition-Movement Models , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[7]  Stavroula-Evita Fotinea,et al.  E-accessibility to educational content for the deaf , 2006 .

[8]  A. Burger,et al.  Design of a sign-language translation system between the Japanese-Korean by Java-Lifo language , 1999, Proceedings of IEEE. IEEE Region 10 Conference. TENCON 99. 'Multimedia Technology for Asia-Pacific Information Infrastructure' (Cat. No.99CH37030).

[9]  Angus B. Grieve-Smith,et al.  SignSynth: A Sign Language Synthesis Application Using Web3D and Perl , 2001, Gesture Workshop.

[10]  Wen Gao,et al.  Large vocabulary sign language recognition based on fuzzy decision trees , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[11]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  A machine translation system from English to American Sign Language , 2000, AMTA.

[12]  Michael G. Strintzis,et al.  Gesture synthesis from sign language notation using MPEG-4 humanoid animation parameters and inverse kinematics , 2006 .

[13]  K. Karpouzis,et al.  A dynamic environment for Greek Sign Language Synthesis using virtual characters , 2005 .

[14]  Ian Marshall,et al.  A Prototype Text to British Sign Language (BSL) Translation System , 2003, ACL.

[15]  Yoshinao Aoki,et al.  Development of a CG-animation system for sign language communication between different languages , 1997, Proceedings of ICICS, 1997 International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing. Theme: Trends in Information Systems Engineering and Wireless Multimedia Communications (Cat..

[16]  Catherine N. Ball,et al.  Representation of american sign language for machine translation , 2002 .

[17]  P.N. Vassilia,et al.  "Listening to deaf": A Greek sign language translator , 2006, 2006 2nd International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies.

[18]  Yoshinao Aoki,et al.  Sign language communication between Japanese-Korean and Japanese-Portuguese using CG animation , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP '98 (Cat. No.98CH36181).

[19]  Kostas Karpouzis,et al.  Developing an e-Learning Platform for the Greek Sign Language , 2004, ICCHP.

[20]  Jin Hou,et al.  A real-time interactive nonverbal communication system through semantic feature extraction as an interlingua , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[21]  Kazuo Kamata,et al.  An approach to Japanese-sign language translation system , 1989, Conference Proceedings., IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

[22]  Ευίτα-Σταυρούλα Φωτεινέα,et al.  An Environment for Deaf Accessibility to Educational Content , 2007 .

[23]  Stelios Piperidis,et al.  A Unified POS Tagging Architecture and its Application to Greek , 2000, LREC.

[24]  R. Mayberry,et al.  First-language acquisition after childhood differs from second-language acquisition: the case of American Sign Language. , 1993, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[25]  Stavroula-Evita Fotinea,et al.  Processing linguistic data for GSL structure representation , 2006 .

[26]  Stavroula-Evita Fotinea,et al.  An Environment for Deaf Accessibility to Educational Content , 2006 .

[27]  Ian Marshall,et al.  Sign Language Translation via DRT and HPSG , 2002, CICLing.

[28]  Tony Veale,et al.  The Challenges of Cross-Modal Translation: English-to-Sign-Language Translation in the Zardoz System , 1998, Machine Translation.

[29]  Stavroula-Evita Fotinea,et al.  Multipurpose Design and Creation of GSL Dictionaries , 2004 .

[30]  M. G. Strintzis,et al.  VSigns - A Virtual Sign Synthesis Web Tool , 2004 .

[31]  W. Stokoe,et al.  A dictionary of American sign language on linguistic principles , 1965 .

[32]  Ursula Bellugi,et al.  The neural organization of language: evidence from sign language aphasia , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[33]  Stavroula-Evita Fotinea,et al.  GSLC: Creation and Annotation of a Greek Sign Language Corpus for HCI , 2007, HCI.

[34]  Ευίτα-Σταυρούλα Φωτεινέα,et al.  Generating linguistic content for Greek to GSL conversion , 2005 .

[35]  Lynette van Zijl,et al.  The South African sign language machine translation project: issues on non-manual sign generation , 2006 .

[36]  Matt Huenerfauth,et al.  A Multi-Path Architecture for Machine Translation of English Text into American Sign Language Animation , 2004, NAACL.