I. Marshall

The development of language processing support for the ViSiCAST project

ViSiCAST is a major new project funded by the European Union, aiming to provide improved access to services and facilities for deaf citizens through sign language presented by a virtual human, or avatar. We give here an outline of the project, and describe early work in the area of linguistics and language processing. This work covers two distinct but related areas: first, the development of an XML-compliant notation for deaf sign language gestures, which can be used to drive the signing avatar; and, second, the development of a framework supporting the translation of natural language text into this gesture-orientated notation.

Linguistic modelling and language-processing technologies for Avatar-based sign language presentation

Sign languages are the native languages for many pre-lingually deaf people and must be treated as genuine natural languages worthy of academic study in their own right. For such pre-lingually deaf, whose familiarity with their local spoken language is that of a second language learner, written text is much less useful than is commonly thought. This paper presents research into sign language generation from English text at the University of East Anglia that has involved sign language grammar development to support synthesis and visual realisation of sign language by a virtual human avatar. One strand of research in the ViSiCAST and eSIGN projects has concentrated on the generation in real time of sign language performance by a virtual human (avatar) given a phonetic-level description of the required sign sequence. A second strand has explored generation of such a phonetic description from English text. The utility of the conducted research is illustrated in the context of sign language synthesis by a preliminary consideration of plurality and placement within a grammar for British Sign Language (BSL). Finally, ways in which the animation generation subsystem has been used to develop signed content on public sector Web sites are also illustrated.

Development of a legible deaf-signing virtual human

Many deaf people rely on sign language as their primary mode of communication. They will enjoy enhanced information access if media applications can provide signed commentaries. The advent of multimedia makes such provision possible. We outline a prototype real time subtitle-to-signing translation system, based on the adaptation and integration of existing software components. We describe the development of a framework, using the Tcl/Tk environment, that supports the integration of distributed system components using a basic communications infrastructure. We discuss the development of a virtual human (avatar), deployed in this framework, to perform the signing.

A Prototype Text to British Sign Language (BSL) Translation System

We demonstrate a text to sign language translation system for investigating sign language (SL) structure and assisting in production of sign narratives and informative presentations. The system is demonstrable on a conventional PC laptop computer.