An Example-Based Approach to Translating Sign Language

Sara Morrissey, Andy Way


Abstract
Users of sign languages are often forced to use a language in which they have reduced competence simply because documentation in their preferred format is not available. While some research exists on translating between natural and sign languages, we present here what we believe to be the first attempt to tackle this problem using an example-based (EBMT) approach. Having obtained a set of English–Dutch Sign Language examples, we employ an approach to EBMT using the ‘Marker Hypothesis’ (Green, 1979), analogous to the successful system of (Way & Gough, 2003), (Gough & Way, 2004a) and (Gough & Way, 2004b). In a set of experiments, we show that encouragingly good translation quality may be obtained using such an approach.
Anthology ID:
2005.mtsummit-ebmt.14
Volume:
Workshop on example-based machine translation
Month:
September 13-15
Year:
2005
Address:
Phuket, Thailand
Venue:
MTSummit
SIG:
Publisher:
Note:
Pages:
109–116
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2005.mtsummit-ebmt.14
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Sara Morrissey and Andy Way. 2005. An Example-Based Approach to Translating Sign Language. In Workshop on example-based machine translation, pages 109–116, Phuket, Thailand.
Cite (Informal):
An Example-Based Approach to Translating Sign Language (Morrissey & Way, MTSummit 2005)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/auto-file-uploads/2005.mtsummit-ebmt.14.pdf