I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more. Harley Hamilton
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
On 9/8/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more. Harley Hamilton
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
Well, I suppose it'd be a good way of learning sign languages. And I think it'd be better to just upload the videos to Commons and link to them in Wikipedia articles like we link to spoken versions.
That would be a bit silly.
English is spoken in quite a few countries: the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, South Africa, India...
In these countries, there are several distinct signed languages used:
American Sign Language in the US and much of Canada Maritime provinces signed language in Canada (I think??) British Sign Language in the UK Auslan in Australia Indian Sign Language in India.
Now, would it be practical to include videos in every single one of these with each article?
Also, based on responses to this thread as well as personal experience elsewhere, it seems that the pioneering work of William Stokoe in sign linguistics has not yet reached the general hearing public. The main point of his research was that signed languages are fully developed languages of their own, and are fully independent of spoken languages.
They are NOT alternative systems for representing spoken languages (with the exception of a few signed languages constructed specifically for that purpose, but none of which has native users)
Now, your question about most deaf people reading and writing English is indeed a very valid one.
But then, it's also true that all Cornish speakers are bilingual in English. So why do we have a Cornish Wikipedia? What about the Scots Wikipedia? Why do we have a Catalan Wikipedia when nearly all Catalans can read and write Spanish or French?
The simplest answer is that it is the native language for these people. Reading an article in one's native language gives a deeper level of comprehension than reading an article in a language learnt as a foreign language.
However, in response to the main request, I'm not sure a video medium is a good idea for a few reasons.
1) Video has high space and bandwidth requirements. 2) Interwiki links are impossible. 3) People may have a problem with the way a particular person signs. It is impractical to upload many videos for the same article, as can be done for the spoken Wikipedia projects. 4) Artificial generation of signed languages is easily implementable, and requires much much much less server space and bandwidth -- the data is stored as plain text, and the sign language is generated by a virtual person as part of an external program (or perhaps a java applet or something).
Bilingual medium also seems a bad idea for a few reasons.
1) Deaf people using ASL may have other languages as well. For example, one's mother tongue may be Navajo, but for deaf Navajos, the common sign language is ASL. 2) American Sign Language is used outside of the US, including sometimes in countries where English is not widely spoken.
Mark
On 08/09/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
On 9/8/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more. Harley Hamilton
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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On 9/8/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
ASL is not English. It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the bandwidth and space required to store them.
Kelly
What about making a font with pictures of hands doing the signs, and making users download that?
On 9/10/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
ASL is not English. It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the bandwidth and space required to store them.
Kelly _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
That would be like making a font with every single English word as a separate letter.
Not feasible.
Mark
On 10/09/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
What about making a font with pictures of hands doing the signs, and making users download that?
On 9/10/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
ASL is not English. It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the bandwidth and space required to store them.
Kelly _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Oh, wow. Well, just ignore my complete and total ignorance of ASL.
On 9/10/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
That would be like making a font with every single English word as a separate letter.
Not feasible.
Mark
On 10/09/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
What about making a font with pictures of hands doing the signs, and making users download that?
On 9/10/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
ASL is not English. It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the bandwidth and space required to store them.
Kelly _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Phroziac wrote:
What about making a font with pictures of hands doing the signs, and making users download that?
Hoi, Sign languages are more complicated than just pictures of hands. Facial expressions are part of the language. So making a font is not applicable. By the way, there is a font for "wording". So it is possible to show this text in a font with hands indicating the characters.
Thanks, GerardM
On 9/10/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
Uhm, why does that need it's own wiki? Couldn't the videos just be added to en wiki? And also, can't most deaf people (in english speaking countries) read/write english?
ASL is not English. It has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. But I question whether videos of signed language are worth the bandwidth and space required to store them.
Kelly
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 08/09/05, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
Surely it would operate much as the various "spoken wikipedia" projects do currently? Though, on reading [[m:Video policy]] I note there are some technical limitations; the 2mb filesize cap would probably come into play for a video of any length.
Surely it would operate much as the various "spoken wikipedia" projects do currently? Though, on reading [[m:Video policy]] I note there are some technical limitations; the 2mb filesize cap would probably come into play for a video of any length.
I think Commons supports larger video files.
Brion Vibber wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Hoi, I like to remind you that Kennisnet offered to host streaming content for the WMF. We have not taken them up on that one yet because so far *we* felt no need. When we want to investigate the possibilities of hosting videos containing sign languages, it is something we should at least investigate a but. I have cc-d Jan-Bart of Kennisnet and I also copied Wolfgang Georgsdorf who spoke about Wikisign on Wikimania and with whom I worked towards including signlanguages in the Ultimate Wiktionary.
Thanks, GerardM
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
Im a bit confused What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading it? Im not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading a book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active (reading). If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article, then this is just a needless gimmick.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this automatically?
-- mav
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This certainly isn't a gimmick. It's about the status/role of sign language within deaf culture.
From our article on deaf culture:
"Culturally deaf people do not look on deafness as a disability. There is a simple explanation for this: within the community of deaf people, deafness is not a disability but an asset in much the same way it is an asset to be a Navajo within the Navajo tribe or Korean within the community of Koreans of Los Angeles. In short, it is a distinction about language. Since the Navajo or Korean view their language as no more than a social disability within the larger majority culture, so do members of the signing deaf community. They consider deafness a positive trait, because it is tightly connected to other aspects of Deaf culture which they experience as positive. Deaf unity and community is strong. The fact that deafness excludes deaf people from some aspects of the hearing culture further reinforces cohesion within the community."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture
A person with ASL as a native language may consider the addition of ASL to English language Wikipedia to be a breach of NPOV (as well as a ignorance of the fact that these are separate languages with their own grammars). Also note that American sign language and British sign language are not mutually comprehensible.
Caroline/Secretlondon
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer Sent: 08 September 2005 23:20 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] new request for ASL/English wikipedia
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
I'm a bit confused. What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading it? I'm not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading a book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active (reading). If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article, then this is just a needless gimmick.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this automatically?
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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A person with ASL as a native language may consider the addition of ASL to English language Wikipedia to be a breach of NPOV (as well as a ignorance of the fact that these are separate languages with their own grammars). Also note that American sign language and British sign language are not mutually comprehensible. Caroline/Secretlondon
Well, but if it consisted only of movies, it wouldn't really be a wiki... if it had copies of English language articles, it would soon become outdated (and would still be a English-language Wikipedia). As for British and American sign languages, an article can contain links to both if both are created (similar to spoken articles). Making it a WikiProject inside English Wikipedia also means that more people will notice that such project exists than if it was moved to a separate, small wiki.
Signed languages are completely independent of spoken languages. American Sign Language does not directly correspond in grammar, vocabulary, or syntax to spoken or written American English, so watching an article in ASL would be nothing like listening to it spoken.
Mark
On 08/09/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
I'm a bit confused… What real benefit would there be for a hearing-impaired person watching a video of an article being signed instead of them reading it? I'm not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely ignorant on how sign language is processed in the brain. Is the difference similar to watching TV vs reading a book? One act is mostly passive (watching) and one is mostly active (reading). If that is the case, then this idea makes sense. But if there really is not much benefit between watching an article get signed vs reading the article, then this is just a needless gimmick.
There is no software to support such a thing at present.
Does anybody know if there is current software that can do this automatically?
-- mav
Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 08/09/05, HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
It strikes me that this might be more practical if it were done in a similar way to the "Spoken Wikipedia" articles; rather than setting up a new wikipedia, build it "in-line" to the existing English wiki.
If you're not aware of the Spoken Wikipedia project, it aims to add an audio file to articles; these are linked through an information box on the page, along with a note of which version of the page they came from (so "audio file dated 15th June 2005") and can be downloaded by users.
See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive for a sample of what the page looks like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia has more details; as Wikipedia handles sound and video files in much the same way, this would be the most effective way of going about it. I'm not sure if a new "bilingual Wikipedia" is really the best way to handle this; the project would likely cope much better as part of the larger en.wiki community.
Since video files are effectively impossible to edit in the same way as text, any seperate wiki would end up having to do something like this anyway; as such, you'd not really gain anything by not having the thousands of regular English Wikipedia contributors not working on the text versions of the articles.
That said, the addition of sign-language forms of articles is an interesting idea; I would be delighted to see the option taking off, though personally I'm unsure of the potential size of the audience. We shall see.
HHamilto@doe.k12.ga.us wrote in message news:OFF9C091A5.D2C71C17-ON85257076.006A0360-85257076.0069F851@doe.k12.ga.us...
I am writing to request the establishment of an American Sign Language-English bilingual Wikipedia. This will contain the written word versions of articles (Englsih) and American Sign Language versions via video. We have a dozen users ready to start building this powerful resource for deaf users and will be recruiting more.
I had an idea in connection with this, whilst reading all the "how do we do it" messages. Unfortunately the website I wanted to use is unavailable: the SWML (SignWirting Markup language) site at http://swml.ucpel.tche.br/ seems be broken at present.
I wondered whether it could be possible to create a SignWriting extension to Mediawiki, along the same lines as WikiHiero, which used SWML as the source. This would at the very least allow us to display the signs in articles about them, and might provide some sort of kick-start for more extensive usage.
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