Tools for the use of SignWriting as a language resource

Abstract

Representation of linguistic data is an issue of utmost importance when developing language resources, but the lack of a standard written form in sign languages presents a challenge. Different notation systems exist, but only SignWriting seems to have some use in the native signer community. It is, however, a difficult system to use computationally, not based on a linear sequence of characters. We present the project “VisSE”, which aims to develop tools for the effective use of SignWriting in the computer. The first of these is an application which uses computer vision to interpret SignWriting, understanding the meaning of new or existing transcriptions, or even hand-written images. Two additional tools will be able to consume the result of this recognizer: first, a textual description of the features of the transcription will make it understandable for non-signers. Second, a three-dimensional avatar will be able to reproduce the configurations and movements contained within the transcription, making it understandable for signers even if not familiar with SignWriting. Additionally, the project will result in a corpus of annotated SignWriting data which will also be of use to the computational linguistics community.