Machine Translation of multiple languages into Indian Sign Language Glossary using Dependency Parsing

Abstract

Sign languages have possibly been around for longer than spoken languages. What is interesting about them is that they evolve similarly to spoken languages and tend to have complex grammar and vocabulary. They are mostly used in day-to-day communications by the hearing-impaired community or by people who interact with them on a daily basis. It is even considered by some to be their mother tongue. Indian Sign Language is used mainly in the Indian subcontinent, mostly by the hearing-impaired community. Apart from investigations that have a more or less sociological approach, research results about the linguistic structure of sign language in India had been very scarce until the last decade. However, it has gained prominence in recent years. The 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) acknowledged that the needs of people with hearing disabilities had been relatively neglected and envisaged the development of a sign language research and training center, to promote and develop sign language and training of teachers and interpreters. As such, some work is being done in translating spoken languages in various forms into ISL. But most of the work done in this regard always focuses on the accuracy of the signed videos while grammar takes a back step. In 2 we show that these tools are mainly used by hearing-impaired students who are trying to pick up English as a second language. Our work hence focuses on getting as much grammatical accuracy as possible for converting English to Indian Sign Language. Here we tackle the problem of converting written text into ISL video by using Text for Indian Sign Language as an intermediary step. To do this, we use rule-based translation methods and apply techniques such as multi-word expression detection and synonym substitution in the source language. In this thesis, I shall try to explain the advantages of taking this route as well as provide some background into the world of sign languages with a focus on Indian Sign Language (ISL).