ILT 1.9 meeting with UEA Norwich

ILT 1.9 are focussing on providing translation support for patients with limited English when they go to book an appointment at the GP's surgery. They are targeting Deaf users of Irish Sign Language (ISL) and also Bangla speakers.

To this end they have developed a corpus based on patient-receptionist dialogues, and have recently finished filming an ISL user signing the corpus phrases. The corpus is also being translated into Bangla. They will then transcribe the ISL corpus using HamNoSys, a transcription system for sign languages. The corpus will be used in a corpus-based MT system with an avatar simulating the ISL output.

They want to use SiGML to represent the HamNoSys transcription: SiGML provides an interface between the transcription and the animation program that drives the avatar. A particular area of research interest is the incorporation of NMFs (Non-Manual features are used in sign language to convey intonation and emotion amongst other things) of ISL in the Avatar animation.

ILT1.9 recently visited the "virtual humans" team at UEA Norwich, where SiGML was developed. Reuse of their research results for their project will make an interesting collaboration.

The UEA team have completed an impressive number of projects involving avatars to assist Deaf people communicate. They are currently involved in two EU projects: Dictasign and to Signspeak.