ECHO Corpus
The European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) corpus is a multilingual corpus containing video material from three SLssign languages: NGTSign Language of the Netherlands, BSLBritish Sign Language and STSSwedish Sign Language. Eight signers were recorded for 1.5 hours following the same tasks in each language. For NGTSign Language of the Netherlands and BSLBritish Sign Language sign language poetry was added to the corpus. Additionally annotated segments of the Gehörlos So! corpus of DGSGerman Sign Language (Heßmann, 2001) were added to the corpus. The Echo project was a 18-month EU funded project dedicated to bring Essential Cultural Heritage online. The ECHO corpus was built from 2003–2004 by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Radboud University and University of Lund.
Filming took place in a studio with one or two signers at the same time. The signers were sitting or standing and depending on the task, recorded separately or closely next to each other. A single-coloured background was used.
| Languages | British Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, Swedish Sign Language, German Sign Language |
|---|---|
| Size | 1.5 hours recorded |
| Participants |
8 participants
Native signers 20–40 years old |
| Metadata Format | IMDI, OLAC |
| Translation | Dutch, English and Swedish, size unknown |
| Annotation | See Nonhebel et al. (2004) |
| Data Format | ELAN |
| Licence | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 |
| Access | Open access to videos and transcripts via Language Archive |
| Webpages |
Project page: http://echo2.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/home/ (archival copy)
Project results: http://www.let.ru.nl/sign-lang/echo/ (archival copy) Dataset: https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4892-C 
|
| Institution | Max Planck Insitute for Psycholinguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, University of Lund |
Cite as
Barbara Cassin, Wim Emmerik, Annika Nonhebel, Els van der Kooij, Johanna Mesch, Annemieke van Kampen, Onno Crasborn, Rachel Sutton-Spence, Rachel Sutton-Spence / Dafydd Waters, Anja Hiddinga, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Dafydd Waters, and Leendert Pot. (2003 - 2005). Collection "ECHO". The Language Archive. https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4892-C. (Accessed [insert date])
Common tasks used in this corpus
Hide/Show tasks
| Task | Lexical elicitation |
|---|---|
| Corpus Language | British Sign Language |
| # recordings – open access | 1 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-49AF-B
|
| Task | Lexical elicitation |
| Corpus Language | Sign Language of the Netherlands |
| # recordings – open access | 4 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4A68-0
|
| Task | Lexical elicitation |
| Corpus Language | Swedish Sign Language |
| # recordings – open access | 1 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4AE2-C
|
| Task | Retelling of fables |
| Corpus Language | British Sign Language |
| # recordings – open access | 10 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4950-1
|
| Task | Retelling of fables |
| Corpus Language | Sign Language of the Netherlands |
| # recordings – open access | 20 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-49C8-8
|
| Task | Retelling of fables |
| Corpus Language | Swedish Sign Language |
| # recordings – open access | 10 |
| # recordings – restricted access | 0 |
| Data available |
https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0001-4AD9-1
|
References
Primary references
- Annika Nonhebel, Onno A. Crasborn, Els van der Kooij (2004). "Sign language transcription conventions for the ECHO Project". Annotation Convention. 11 pp.
- Jens Heßmann (2001). "Gehörlos so! : Materialien zur Gebärdensprache". 1032 pp. ISBN: 3-927731-86-2.
This entry was last modified on 27 March 2025.