Sign language synthesis systems must contend with an enormous variety of possible target languages across the world, and in many locations, such as Europe, the number of sign languages that can be found in a relatively limited geographical area can be surprising. For such a synthesis system to be widely useful, it must not be limited to only one target language. This presents challenges both for the linguistic models and the animation systems that drive these displays. This paper presents a case study for animating discourse in three target languages, French, Greek and German, generated directly from the same base linguistic description. The case study exploits non-lexical constructs in sign, which are more common among sign languages, while providing a first step for synthesizing those aspects that are different. Further, it suggests a possible path forward to exploring whether linguistic structures in one sign language can be exploited in other sign languages, which might be particularly helpful in under-resourced languages.
@inproceedings{mcdonald:24018:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {McDonald, John C. and Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Wolfe, Rosalee},
title = {Multilingual Synthesis of Depictions through Structured Descriptions of Sign: An Initial Case Study},
pages = {153--162},
editor = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Mesch, Johanna and Schulder, Marc},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC-COLING} 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Evaluation of Sign Language Resources},
maintitle = {2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC-COLING} 2024)},
publisher = {{ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA) and the International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL)}},
address = {Torino, Italy},
day = {25},
month = may,
year = {2024},
isbn = {978-2-493814-30-2},
language = {english},
url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/24018.pdf}
}