Researchers in several countries are studying how to create automatic signing. The principle is that captions are translated and transformed into an animated signer (avatar) on screen. In theory, this approach would allow access through sign language to all captioned television programmes and videos. This is, however, a very complex process. Firstly, the grammar and meaning of the incoming text (for example, English) has to be extracted, and then these have to be translated into the correct grammar for the sign language (for example, BSL). This is extremely complex for two reasons: we do not yet have a full description of the grammar of any sign language, and we do not yet have ways of providing full animation of face and body as well as hands.
At the moment it is only possible to provide an approximate sign-for-word translation, using a stored vocabulary of signs pieced together, one sign after the other. Animated signing in its present form cannot be understood by signers, and therefore is not currently a practical approach. However, at some point in the future it may become feasible (although it should be noted that despite over 40 years of work on machine translation, there is as yet no perfect machine translator between two spoken languages).
Information on the research in Great Britain can be obtained from:
Independent Television Commission
ITC Engineering Division
Kings Worthy Court
Kings Worthy
Winchester
Hampshire SO23 7QA
e-mail: engineering@itc.co.uk
Information on other projects can be found at: