Gloves Translate Sign Language Into Auditory Speech

Zothecula writes about some pretty cool sensor gloves. From the article: "Since beginning in 2003, the Microsoft Imagine Cup has tasked students the world over with developing technology aimed at solving real-world problems. In this, its 10th year, students were asked to build their project around a specific Millennium Development Goal ... The winners have just been announced ... [and winning] first place (and US$25,000) in the Software Design category was the Ukraine's quadSquad with their EnableTalk gloves that translate sign language into speech in real time."

Comments

And thousands of interpreters stomachs sank

[Anonymous Coward]

Another $20 an hour job gone...

Re:And thousands of interpreters stomachs sank

[vlm]

Wrong translation direction, this going from signs to speech so a deaf person doesn't have to carry a txt2speech or a notepad and pen or learn to speak (yes deaf people can learn to speak, like one of my friends did, confuses the hell out of people who assume being able to speak means being able to hear)

Another thing is one of my kids former school teachers worked her way thru school in the opposite direction translating speech to signs. The general impression I got was it was much closer to the fry cook pay level than the $20 claimed above. You can get $20 if you have deep technical knowledge and translate tech docs from english to Chinese, or if you have a security clearance and know Arabic or other ME languages, but...

Re:And thousands of interpreters stomachs sank

[CanHasDIY]

So what would the translation be if you used the gloves to masturbate?

a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

Old News...

[inthealpine]

Until I see a gorilla using them to talk about a secret diamond mine, I'm unimpressed.

No, it translates fingerspelling into speech

[wanderfowl]

After watching the video, it seems that what they've done is create gloves which recognize the various fingerspelling signs. If somebody wants to sign "I need to withdraw money" (like, at a bank), what this allows them to do is to make the sign for "I", then "N, E, E, D", then "T,O", and so forth. Then the gloves feed that output into a TTS system. This works (because ASL users and English speakers share a writing system), but is horribly inefficient, and would be equivalent to a translation module that makes you speak every letter of the written words individually before putting the words into Spanish.

This is fundamentally different from "translating sign language", where the gloves would recognize the (much more complex and spatially oriented) sign for "I", for "need", for "withdraw" and for "money", and then translate that into "I need to withdraw money" and speak it aloud. Adding in the fact that ASL syntax is fundamentally different than in English, it's quite a tall order. Interpreters need not fear.

This is cool, nobody's denying that, and for some jobs, this might be great, but at the moment, I don't see it working much faster than taking out the requisite smartphone and writing down what you're trying to get across.

Re:No, it translates fingerspelling into speech

[Anonymous Coward]

After watching the video, it seems that what they've done is create gloves which recognize the various fingerspelling signs. If somebody wants to sign "I need to withdraw money" (like, at a bank), what this allows them to do is to make the sign for "I", then "N, E, E, D", then "T,O", and so forth. Then the gloves feed that output into a TTS system. This works (because ASL users and English speakers share a writing system), but is horribly inefficient, and would be equivalent to a translation module that makes you speak every letter of the written words individually before putting the words into Spanish.

This is fundamentally different from "translating sign language", where the gloves would recognize the (much more complex and spatially oriented) sign for "I", for "need", for "withdraw" and for "money", and then translate that into "I need to withdraw money" and speak it aloud. Adding in the fact that ASL syntax is fundamentally different than in English, it's quite a tall order. Interpreters need not fear.

This is cool, nobody's denying that, and for some jobs, this might be great, but at the moment, I don't see it working much faster than taking out the requisite smartphone and writing down what you're trying to get across.

I work with a deaf person, and believe me, they can sign incredibly fast. I reckon that he could say something simple "do you want to get lunch" fast enough with finger spelling that it'd sound completely normal speed to me. Sure, adding memory for all the words for various languages would be neat (very hard though), but for now, it's quite useful. Keep in mind that they don't always carry paper/phones with them, so sometimes the only option is to sign.

Re:Obvious...after you see it

[dkleinsc]

With that kind of glove, deaf people could say "Talk to the hand, because the ear's not listening!"

Re:Obvious...after you see it

[Anubis IV]

So, this device only actually allows the signer to sign letters that can be used to spell words, rather than translating full words and phrases.

If that's all they were going for, then I already have a tried and true set of devices that allows for the two-way communication you're talking about, and it's far cheaper, to boot.

Paper and pencil.

Not going to work

[Cyberax]

The gloves translate dactylology (finger spelling). That's fairly easy, but it's horribly inefficient.

'Real' sign languages (like ASL) are much harder to translate because they are somewhat non-linear. A single gesture can describe several things at once: size, direction, emotional state, etc. There's no way you can translate it without fully understanding the context of the speech. And we all know how good computers are at such tasks...

Re:Not going to work

[h4rr4r]

Also ASL does not have articles, so it does not translate directly to english. It is really a visual spatial language, people always seem to miss that.

Re:Bravo

[h4rr4r]

Only if they spell out each word, which is not generally what ASL users do. Even many phrases, my limited knowledge of includes "Thank You" which is one motion, not spelling out the words.

Finger Spelling is NOT Sign Language

[cwgmpls]

Mod parent up! Finger Spelling is *not* Sign Language. If all this does is translate finger spelling into synthesized speech, the same thing could be done much faster and cheaper by just typing the words on a standard smartphone device.

This is not even cool. It is just, plain, wrong in so many ways. All of the money and hype spent making and marketing this device would reap 10X as much benefit if the same money were spent educating people about the real nature of deafness and sign language. The developers of this waste of time could start by taking a class about deafness themselves.

The fact that Slashdot perpetuates the inaccurate headline equating finger spelling with sign language just demonstrates how ignorant we all are.

Re:Finger Spelling is NOT Sign Language

[cwgmpls]

They are not translating anything. They are transcribing within the same language. In the demo clip I saw, they are transcribing from English fingerspelling to English speech. There is no translation involved. You are right, even within a language, there can be regional variations. American fingerspelling differs from British. But they are transcribing, not translating.

Re:Why not just use a cellphone?

[cwgmpls]

Presumably, but its not. These gloves transcribe finger spelling. Finger spelling is not a separate language, it does not require translation, and no deaf people use it as their primary form of communication. Any deaf person who knows how to type can easily type faster than they can finger spell.