In my opinion, the best option is to use sign synthesis software. Each
program tends to use a slightly different notation.
However, in the end it should not be difficult for a native ASL signer
to learn with a little bit of effort.
The advantage to such systems is that only the person writing the
article needs to know the transcription, whereas those viewing the
article can view it in transcription OR by computer-generated signing,
the latter of which will be almost universally comprehensible.
http://s-leodm.unm.edu/signsynth/ (the avatar is a little ugly, but it
serves its purpose)
http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/eSIGN/Overview.html (experimental)
http://sy.jdl.ac.cn/en/synthesis.asp (Chinese Sign Language only)
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~waleed/gsl-rec/ (sign recognition, rather
than synthesis)
Mark
On 09/09/05, Neil Harris <usenet(a)tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
Paweł Dembowski wrote:
Regardless of the technical means and organization of a signed Wikipedia, I
would encourage people discussing the matter not to use wordings that may
suggest that ASL is not a language in its own right, or that deaf people
have a less fundamental right to acquire knowledge through their own
languages than have hearing people.
Haruo
Well, the comments are mostly because the person who proposed the new
project wanted to include also English language text of the articles,
which would basically mean forking. And ASL might be a language, but
unless it has also a special writing system, I don't know if it can be
created - after all, we do not create Wikipedias for other languages
that are only spoken and not written.
ASL is most certainly a first-class language, but it _must be written_
to be usable in a text-based system like Wikipedia.
There are two main ASL writing systems: Stokoe, and SignWriting. If you
can work out how to make either of these (or any other system I don't
know about, but is common amongst deaf users of ASL) work with
Wikipedia, you've got a good chance of getting a consensus to start a
new Wikipedia for ASL as a first-class written language. Otherwise, all
you have is the visual equivalent of spoken-word readings of articles in
other languages: they may be interesting and even useful, but since
they're not interactive and Wiki-linked, they're not a Wikipedia.
Your best bet is probably Stokoe, because it's less dependent on graphic
layout. You could _possibly_ represent Stokoe using Unicode symbols and
combining character representations, or use the in-built TeX support, or
you could try ASCII-Stokoe, or writing a custom plugin for a Stokoe-like
Wikitext.
SignWriting is altogether a more difficult problem, as the symbols are
not in most fonts. Something could probably be done with a Wikipedia
extension that converts some form of TeX-like Wikitext format to
SignWriting glyphs, either as rendered .png files, or as SVG.
For an advanced project, you could even consider a SignSynth-like system
that would automatically sign written Wiki-ASL.
Are there any written-sign-language experts here?
-- Neil
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