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International Gesture Workshop

GW 2001: Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction pp 134–145Cite as

SignSynth: A Sign Language Synthesis Application Using Web3D and Perl

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2298))

Abstract

Sign synthesis (also known as text-to-sign) has recently seen a large increase in the number of projects under development. Many of these focus on translation from spoken languages, but other applications include dictionaries and language learning. I will discuss the architecture of typical sign synthesis applications and mention some of the applications and prototypes currently available. I will focus on SignSynth, a CGI-based articulatory sign synthesis prototype I am developing at the University of New Mexico. SignSynth takes as its input a sign language text in ASCII-Stokoe notation (chosen as a simple starting point) and converts it to an internal feature tree. This underlying linguistic representation is then converted into a three-dimensionala nimation sequence in Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML or Web3D), which is automatically rendered by a Web3D browser.

This project was supported by Grant Number 1R03DC03865-01 from the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders of the United States Government (Jill P. Morford, Principal Investigator). This report is solely the responsibility of the author, and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIDCD or the National Institutes of Health. I am also grateful to Sean Burke, Jill Morford, Benjamin Jones and Sharon Utakis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linguistics Department, The University of New Mexico, Humanities 526, 87131, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Angus B. Grieve-Smith

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  1. Angus B. Grieve-Smith
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Fakultät, Universität Bielefeld, 33594, Bielefeld, Germany

    Ipke Wachsmuth  & Timo Sowa  & 

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Grieve-Smith, A.B. (2002). SignSynth: A Sign Language Synthesis Application Using Web3D and Perl. In: Wachsmuth, I., Sowa, T. (eds) Gesture and Sign Language in Human-Computer Interaction. GW 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2298. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47873-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47873-6_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43678-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47873-7

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