Speech For The Deaf

I am linus's ho writes "CNN is running a story about gloves which transelate sign language into audble speach, in a stephen hawking type mannor, only, i suppose, much different. The article can be found here"

Comments

You say Tomato, I say Tom Ate All

[SEWilco]

"...transelate...audble speach, in a stephen hawking type mannor..."

A well-mannered spokesman for Stephen Hawking assured the public today that he will continue to live in his manor. He intends to use his existing traslator to audibly speak as he does now, and will be no meaner.

never gonna work

[elmegil]

My wife is a sign language interpreter, so I have some experience from which to speak.

Anyone who's spent any time around those who speak ASL or any other sign language as their primary language know that there's a hell of a lot more to sign language than the hands. It's also body posture, relative positions of the hands, and especially facial expressions. The main distinguishment between a question and a statement, for example, is all in head posture and facial expression. Another thing that this doesn't address is what's known as classifiers, where the signing person identifies some hand shape and/or position in space as a particular object/person and then uses that same shape and space in the way we would use a pronoun. This is not something I can see software picking up from mere gloves. (BTW all of this is hyper-simplified both by the fact that I myself do not know ASL and by the fact that I'm not discussing this in an ASL-technical forum).

Bottom line: it may have some limited utility in some very special conditions, but it will not simply allow a deaf person to put on a pair of gloves and have an instant voice.

RIght.

[truefluke]

I sign. And I'm hearing impaired. And there is no possible way that this thing would be able to keep up with my signing speed once I'm in the 'zone', or in deep, conceptual sign.

If it is a word for word thing, then it will sound like broken English, and then when I do idiomatic sign, just like speaking idiomatic english, you have to infer the context to get the meaning.

Heh. this is ridculous. Why people just don't learn sign is beyond me.