Boston: Bilingual dictionaries are usually a two-way street: you can look up a word in English and find, say, its Spanish equivalent, but you can also do the reverse. Sign-language dictionaries, however, translate only from written words to gestures. This can be hugely frustrating, particularly for parents of deaf children who want to understand unfamiliar gestures, or deaf people who want to interact online using their primary language. So Boston University (BU) researchers are developing a searchable dictionary for sign language, in which any user can enter a gesture into a dictionary's search engine from her own laptop by signing in front of a built-in camera.Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The first sign-language dictionary that's searchable by gesture.
Boston: Bilingual dictionaries are usually a two-way street: you can look up a word in English and find, say, its Spanish equivalent, but you can also do the reverse. Sign-language dictionaries, however, translate only from written words to gestures. This can be hugely frustrating, particularly for parents of deaf children who want to understand unfamiliar gestures, or deaf people who want to interact online using their primary language. So Boston University (BU) researchers are developing a searchable dictionary for sign language, in which any user can enter a gesture into a dictionary's search engine from her own laptop by signing in front of a built-in camera.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment