Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sign language – Translating'

Sign language is a visual language. It is an effective way of communication for hearing and speech impaired community. In general, all visual languages are multi-modal which utilizes hand gestures, facial expressions and other non-manual features to effectively consider the linguistics of the language while communicating with others. In the recent few years, due to the advancement of computer vision and the NLP field, Sign Language Recognition(SLR) and Sign Language Translation(SLT) topic has attracted many researchers to find an effective way to translate sign language videos to spoken language sentence. Over a decade many ideations have been published but most of them focused on SLR as a mere gesture recognition problem without considering the linguistic structure. In the literature review, we dive deep in to the understanding of various Senor and vision based approaches which were used in the earlier days followed by Deep learning techniques which are offering state-of-the-art results in the recent days. Applying a mid-level Sign Gloss Representation is a key component of performing a successful SLT. Hence, an effective joint learning of mid-level sign Gloss into the Text translation is crucial to improve the performance. In this dissertation, we propose Deep Directive Attention Network (DDAN)-based sign translation framework that allows aligning key-tokens in sign Gloss with key-words in Text. Directive attention transformer is successfully used in this approach to have better inter-intra modal relationship between Gloss sequences and Text sentences which aids in higher translation accuracy of Sign videos to Text sentences. The proposed DDAN contains the Self-Attention (SA) of each sign Gloss and Text, as well as the Gloss Directive-Attention (DA) of Text. Those two attention units, SA and DA, can be placed and integrated in three different proposed DDAN variants, including DA, SDA and SSDA. We evaluate the translation performance of our Sign2(Gloss+Text) and Gloss2Text approaches on the two challenging benchmark datasets PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and ASLG-PC12. The data statistics were analyzed as the first step. Then, three different model variants were evaluated on the above mentioned datasets. The model variant SSDA outperformed the baseline models in both datasets with higher translation accuracy of Sign videos to Text sentences as well as Gloss sequences to Text sentences . Furthermore, we evaluated on various numbers of encoder and decoder to see the optimal count of layers in which the model outperformed the baselines. The hyper-parameter testing result shows the robustness of the proposed framework. In addition to quantitative analysis results, we also provide the qualitative results of the evaluations which shows the generated text sentences has translation precision close to gold standard text along with evident improvement in the morpho-syntax. Based on all the evaluations and analysis results, we demonstrate that out DDAN-based SLT framework outperforms all the state-of-the-art SLT models and achieve better and higher translation accuracy score.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior<br>Este estudo, inserido no Ãmbito dos Estudos da TraduÃÃo, ratifica o reconhecimento da LÃngua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras), graÃas à sua inclusÃo no currÃculo das instituiÃÃes de Ensino Superior brasileiras. O objetivo principal deste trabalho à identificar e apontar a funÃÃo da traduÃÃo em Libras como estratÃgia de compreensÃo e interpretaÃÃo do gÃnero textual artigo cientÃfico em LP na disciplina âPsicologia e EducaÃÃo de Surdosâ, pertencente ao eixo Fundamentos da EducaÃÃo de Surdos, ministrada no Curso de Licenciatura em Letras Libras da Universidade Federal do Cearà (UFC). Com um olhar sobre os discentes surdos, esta pesquisa pretende averiguar se e de que forma a traduÃÃo de textos cientÃficos na direÃÃo LP/Libras serve como instrumento para se alcanÃarem os nÃveis de compreensÃo necessÃrios à realizaÃÃo das atividades que exigem leitura, traduÃÃo e produÃÃo textual/discursiva com o gÃnero textual artigo cientÃfico escrito originalmente em LP. Para chegar ao objetivo precÃpuo do trabalho aqui apresentado, esta investigaÃÃo baseou-se metodologicamente em uma pesquisa-aÃÃo (VIEIRA, 2009), partindo, por um lado, de anÃlises de fatores extratextuais e intratextuais de um texto-fonte (TF) em LP e do texto-alvo correspondente (TA) em Libras. Essas anÃlises foram realizadas por 6 (seis) discentes surdos regularmente matriculados na disciplina âPsicologia e EducaÃÃo de Surdosâ, que antes foram instruÃdos sobre os fundamentos teÃricos propostos por Nord (2016) no domÃnio da Abordagem Funcionalista da TraduÃÃo. Por outro lado, como parte da metodologia, foram aplicados questionÃrios aos mesmos 6 (seis) discentes surdos e tambÃm à docente ministradora da disciplina âPsicologia e EducaÃÃo de Surdos.â Como suporte teÃrico no campo tradutÃrio, fundamentamos esta pesquisa mediante a Teoria de Escopo, concebida por Reiss & Vermeer (1996), e a Abordagem Funcionalista da TraduÃÃo, com nossa atenÃÃo voltada especificamente para os trabalhos de Nord (2012; 2014; 2016). Nossa preocupaÃÃo parte de uma de nossas hipÃteses: a necessidade de preparaÃÃo dos professores que ministram a disciplina âPsicologia e EducaÃÃo de Surdosâ do Curso de Letras Libras da UFC em questÃes relativas ao uso da traduÃÃo como estratÃgia para que os alunos surdos possam alcanÃar melhores objetivos de aprendizagem, ao serem confrontados com textos cientÃficos escritos em LP. Dada a complexidade do gÃnero textual artigo cientÃfico (p. ex.: linguagem tÃcnica e/ou cientÃfica, registro de portuguÃs formal, termos especÃficos etc.), os docentes precisam apresentar, aos discentes, traduÃÃes dos textos em Libras, fornecidas no formato de DVD. Portanto, vislumbramos em nossas hipÃteses que os discentes envolvidos normalmente utilizam a LP como segunda lÃngua, carecendo, assim, de conhecimentos aprofundados que lhes permitam compreender com facilidade textos cientÃficos redigidos nessa lÃngua. TambÃm lhes faltam conhecimentos e experiÃncias com anÃlises textuais que levem em consideraÃÃo diferentes fatores intratextuais e extratextuais como aqueles propostos por Nord (2016). Entendemos essa necessidade como um desafio atual para o Curso de Licenciatura em Libras da UFC. AlÃm disso, compreendemos que, se forem adotadas medidas que conduzam a um entendimento prÃtico desses exercÃcios, auxiliadas por teorias oriundas do campo dos Estudos da TraduÃÃo, os futuros profissionais surdos licenciados em Libras na UFC terÃo uma formaÃÃo mais completa e um melhor domÃnio da compreensÃo leitora em LP. Isto tambÃm certamente se refletirà no 9 desempenho de sua futura funÃÃo de educadores, em que deverÃo estar empenhados na inclusÃo de crianÃas e jovens surdos na sociedade em geral, mas sem deixar de lado os fatores prÃprios da Cultura Surda. De maneira geral, os resultados por nÃs obtidos apontam que o grupo-alvo participante da pesquisa-aÃÃo nÃo està familiarizado com um modelo de anÃlise textual do TF e do TA nos moldes daquele fornecido pela Abordagem Funcionalista de Nord (2016), o que certamente dificulta sua compreensÃo dos conteÃdos apresentados no texto original em portuguÃs e na traduÃÃo em Libras. De maneira especÃfica, podemos concluir, dentre outras coisas, que os alunos surdos examinados/entrevistados: a) precisam se familiarizar mais com as estruturas sintÃticas e o vocabulÃrio em LP; b) precisam conscientizar-se das peculiaridades de sua lÃngua natural/materna perante o PortuguÃs como segunda lÃngua (PSL); c) necessitam fazer leituras mais atentas de textos cientÃficos; d) carecem de conhecimentos mais profundos sobre conceitos tÃpicos da LinguÃstica Textual; e) declaram aumentar seu conhecimento de terminologias especializadas em Libras atravÃs dos textos cientÃficos traduzidos da LP para Libras; f) afirmam a importÃncia da escola inclusiva/bilÃngue para surdos como preparaÃÃo para o Ensino Superior; g) lanÃam mÃo de diferentes mÃdias eletrÃnicas para obterem uma melhor compreensÃo leitora de textos cientÃficos; h) nÃo se consideram, em sua maioria, capazes de traduzir textos cientÃficos da LP para Libras; i) reconhecem que a traduÃÃo à uma ferramenta que traz vantagens para a compreensÃo leitora.<br>This study, which is embedded in the field of Translation Studies, corroborates the recognition of the Brazilian Sign Language, the so-called Libras, thanks to its inclusion in the Brazilian curricula of Higher Education institutions. The main objective of this research is to identify and point out the function of translation in Libras as a strategy for understanding and interpreting the text type scientific article in Portuguese in the subject âPsychology and Education of Deaf Peopleâ, within the framework of the subjects studied in area of the discipline Fundamentals of Education, part of the Libras Undergraduate Course curriculum (Teachers Training Program) at Federal University of Cearà (UFC). With special attention given to deaf students, this research intends to investigate if and how the translation of scientific texts in the Portuguese/Libras direction serves as an instrument to reach the levels of comprehension necessary to carry out the activities that require reading, translation and text/discourse production with the specific text type scientific article originally written in Portuguese. To reach the main objective of this work, this research was methodologically based on an action-research (VIEIRA, 2009), starting with, on the one hand, analyzes of extratextual and intratextual factors of a source text (ST) in Portuguese and the corresponding target text (TT) in Libras. These analyzes were carried out by six (6) deaf students regularly enrolled in the discipline âPsychology and Education of Deaf Peopleâ at UFC, who were previously instructed on the theoretical foundations proposed by Nord (2016) in the field of the Functionalist Approach to Translation. On the other hand, as part of the methodology, questionnaires were applied to the same 6 (six) deaf students, and also to the teacher of the subject âPsychology and Education of Deaf Peopleâ. As a theoretical support in the field of translation, in this research we make use of the fundamental principles of the Scope Theory, conceived by Reiss & Vermeer (1996), and of the Functionalist Approach to Translation, with our attention focused specifically on Nordâs works (2012; 2014; 2016). Our concern is based on one of our hypotheses: the need for preparation of teachers who teach the discipline âPsychology and Education of Deaf Peopleâ in the UFC Libras Undergraduate Course on questions related to the use of translation as a strategy for deaf students to be able to achieve better learning objectives by being confronted with scientific articles written in Portuguese. Because of the complexity of the text type scientific article (e. g. technical and/or scientific language, formal Portuguese language register, specific terms etc.), teachers need to present, to the students, translations of the texts in Libras, exhibited in DVD format. Thus, in our hypotheses we envisage that the students involved usually use Portuguese as a second language, thus lacking in-depth knowledge that could enable them to easily understand scientific articles written in that language. They also lack knowledge and experience with textual analyzes that take into account the different intratextual and extratextual factors such as those proposed by Nord (2016). We understand this need as a current challenge for the UFC Libras Undergraduate Course; we also think that, if measures are adopted leading to a practical understanding of these exercises, aided by theories from the field of Translation Studies, future deaf professionals that will graduate from the UFC Libras Undergraduate Course will have a more complete training and a better command of reading comprehension 11 in Portuguese. This will also certainly be reflected in the performance of their future role as educators, in which they should be committed to include deaf children and young people in society in general, nevertheless without neglecting the characteristics of the culture of deaf people. In general, our results indicate that the target group participating in the action-research is not familiar with a textual analysis model regarding both ST and TT, such as that provided by Nordâs Functionalist Approach to Translation (2016); this fact certainly makes it difficult for deaf students to understand the contents presented in the original Portuguese texts and the corresponding translation into Libras. Specifically, we can conclude, among other things, that the deaf students that we examined/interviewed during our action-research: a) need to become acquainted with the Brazilian Portuguese syntactic structures and vocabulary as well; b) need to be aware of the peculiarities of their natural/mother tongue as compared to Brazilian Portuguese as a second language; c) need to make more careful readings of scientific articles; d) lack deeper knowledge about typical concepts that are used in Text Linguistics; e) declare to increase their knowledge of specialized terminology in Libras through the scientific articles translated from LP to Libras; f) assume the importance of inclusive/and bilingual school for deaf people as a preparation for Higher Education; g) use different electronic media to obtain a better reading comprehension of scientific articles; h) majorly do not consider themselves capable of translating scientific articles from LP to Libras; i) recognize that translation is a tool that really brings advantages to reading comprehension.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, June 1999.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-132).<br>by Robbin Nicole Chapman.<br>S.M.

This dissertation presents the first corpus-based system for translation from Arabic text into Arabic Sign Language (ArSL) for the deaf and hearing impaired, for whom it can facilitate access to conventional media and allow communication with hearing people. In addition to the familiar technical problems of text-to-text machine translation,building a system for sign language translation requires overcoming some additional challenges. First,the lack of a standard writing system requires the building of a parallel text-to-sign language corpus from scratch, as well as computational tools to prepare this parallel corpus. Further, the corpus must facilitate output in visual form, which is clearly far more difficult than producing textual output. The time and effort involved in building such a parallel corpus of text and visual signs from scratch mean that we will inevitably be working with quite small corpora. We have constructed two parallel Arabic text-to-ArSL corpora for our system. The first was built from school level language instruction material and contains 203 signed sentences and 710 signs. The second was constructed from a children's story and contains 813 signed sentences and 2,478 signs. Working with corpora of limited size means that coverage is a huge issue. A new technique was derived to exploit Arabic morphological information to increase coverage and hence, translation accuracy. Further, we employ two different example-based translation methods and combine them to produce more accurate translation output. We have chosen to use concatenated sign video clips as output rather than a signing avatar, both for simplicity and because this allows us to distinguish more easily between translation errors and sign synthesis errors. Using leave-one-out cross-validation on our first corpus, the system produced translated sign sentence outputs with an average word error rate of 36.2% and an average position-independent error rate of 26.9%. The corresponding figures for our second corpus were an average word error rate of 44.0% and 28.1%. The most frequent source of errors is missing signs in the corpus; this could be addressed in the future by collecting more corpus material. Finally, it is not possible to compare the performance of our system with any other competing Arabic text-to-ArSL machine translation system since no other such systems exist at present.

Hearing impaired and others with verbal challenges face difficulty to communicate with society; Sign Language represents their communication such as numbers or phrases. The communication becomes a challenge with people from other countries using different languages. Additionally, the sign language is different from one country to another. That is, learning one sign language doesn’t mean learning all sign languages. To translate a word from sign language to a spoken language is a challenge and to change a particular word from that language to another language is even a bigger challenge. In such cases, there is necessity for 2 interpreters: One from sign language to the source-spoken language and one from the source language to the target language. There is ample research done on sign recognition, yet this paper focuses on translating gestures from one language to another. In this study, a smartphone approach is proposed for Sign Language recognition, because smartphones are available worldwide. Smartphones are limited in computational power so, a client server application is proposed where most of processing tasks are done on the server side. In client-server application system, client could be a smartphone application that captures images of sign gestures to be recognized and sent to a server. In turn, the server processes the data and returns the translation Sign to client. On the server application side, where most of the sign recognition tasks take place, background of the sign image is deleted, and under Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) color space is set to black. The sign gesture then separate by detecting the biggest linked constituent in the frame. Extracted feature are in binary form pixels, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is used to classify sign images. After classification, the letter for a given sign is assigned, and by putting the sequence of letters, a word is created. The word translates to target language, in this case English, and the result returns to client application.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-08-17T13:19:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Ricardo Ferreira Santos.pdf: 5860920 bytes, checksum: 03e5674e8a2eb7e2f346b477140a24db (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T13:19:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ricardo Ferreira Santos.pdf: 5860920 bytes, checksum: 03e5674e8a2eb7e2f346b477140a24db (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-06-29<br>Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES<br>The simultaneous interpretation (SI) modality of Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) to Portuguese has been wining space in several activities on the educational circle. The performance of the Translator and Interpreter of Libras/Portuguese (TILSP, in Portuguese), in this context, demands articulations of theoretic-practical nature in order that the speech in Libras can be comprehended by interlocutors that are not familiar with the language. Due to generic formation and to the lack of practice, some interpreters present difficulties and insecurities in mobilizing speeches in communicative interactions. Therefore, the goal of this research is to analyze the authorship and construction of meaning in the speech-visual, through expressive intonation present in SI of Libras/Portuguese on the academic circle: conference genre. The intonation, prosodic element, is present on the Production and perception of each word or statement, in the oral speech or sign language. For this reason, our research questions are: (i) how the non-hand markers, in the Libras speech, can influence the prosody on Portuguese, specifically intonation; (ii) how the interpreter constructs meaning in SI through intonation; (iii) how is constituted the authorship in the intonation-discursive mobilization between Libras and Portuguese from the speech-visual perspective. By theory grounded in a dialogic perspective set in the Bakhtin Circle, the speech-visuality studies of Beth Brait, here understood as several materialization in the shape of texts in a visual and speech dimension constitutive in the production and construction of meaning, and the Interactional Intonation Theory (IIT) of David Brazil. From these, we made a methodological slide from the statements of verbal signs in sign language and from the materialization of speech-visual intonational signs through the complex enunciative-discursive mobilization fulfilled on the interpretation from Libras to Portuguese in conferences. We chose as corpus two SI of Libras to the oral modality (Portuguese) performed by TILSP at the II Event-Libras: matches and mismatches – at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp, in Portuguese), campus Guarulhos. The analyses show that the interpreters on the SI activity, in a dialogical agitated environment, filled with the social vocal tensions, crossed through political speeches, controversial and ironic tones, perform or present some difficulties at the construction of meaning through the active comprehension and by the speech, visual and axiological position, materialized in the prosodic choices, constituting authorship in the interpretation. It is hoped that this research helps with the investigations of prosody and meaning construction between the modalities Libras/Portuguese, with the proposition of contributing with the formation of Libras interpreters and the work activities of these professionals<br>A modalidade de interpretação simultânea (IS) de Libras para a Língua Portuguesa tem ganhado espaços em várias atividades na esfera educacional. A atuação do Tradutor e Intérprete de Língua de Sinais /Língua Portuguesa (TILSP), nesse contexto, demanda articulações de cunho teórico-prático para que o discurso em Libras possa ser compreendido por interlocutores que desconhecem essa língua. Devido à formação genérica e à falta de prática, alguns intérpretes apresentam dificuldades e insegurança em mobilizar discursos em interações comunicativas. Por essa razão, o objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar a autoria e construção de sentidos na perspectiva verbo-visual, por meio da entoação expressiva presente na IS de Libras/Língua Portuguesa na esfera acadêmico-científica: gênero conferência. A entoação, elemento prosódico, está presente na produção e percepção de cada palavra ou do enunciado, na fala oral ou na língua de sinais. Por esse motivo nossas perguntas de pesquisa são: (i) como os marcadores não-manuais no discurso em Libras podem influenciar a prosódia na Língua Portuguesa, em específico a entoação; (ii) como o intérprete constrói os sentidos na IS por meio da entoação na Língua Portuguesa; (iii) como se constitui a autoria na mobilização enunciativo-discursiva entre a Libras e Língua Portuguesa na perspectiva verbo-visual. Por meio da fundamentação teórica em uma perspectiva dialógica fundamentada no Círculo de Bakhtin, dos estudos da verbo-visualidade de Beth Brait, aqui entendida como as diversas materializações em forma texto em uma dimensão verbal e visual constitutivos na produção e construções de sentidos, e da Teoria Interacional da Entoação (TEI) de David Brazil, realizamos um deslocamento metodológico dos enunciados a partir dos signos verbais em língua de sinais e da materialização dos signos verbo-visuais entoacionais por meio da complexa mobilização enunciativo-discursiva realizada na interpretação da Libras para a Língua Portuguesa em conferências. Escolhemos como corpus duas interpretações simultâneas de Libras para a modalidade oral (Língua Portuguesa) realizadas pelos TILSP no II Evento-Libras: Encontros e Desencontros – realizado na Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), campus Guarulhos. As análises mostram que as intérpretes na atividade interpretativa simultânea, em um ambiente dialogicamente agitado, repleto de tensões das vozes sociais, atravessadas por discursos políticos, polêmicos e com tons irônicos, realizam ou apresentam algumas dificuldades na construção de sentidos por meio da compreensão ativa responsiva e pela posição verbo-visual-axiológica, materializadas nas escolhas prosódicas, constituindo a autoria na interpretação. Espera-se que esta pesquisa colabore com as investigações da prosódia e construção de sentidos entre as modalidades Libras/Língua Portuguesa, com o propósito de contribuir com a formação do intérprete de Libras e as atividades de trabalho desses profissionais

Includes bibliographical references.<br>There has been a definite breakdown of communication between the hearing and the Deaf communities. This communication gap drastically effects many facets of a Deaf person’s life, including education, job opportunities and quality of life. Researchers have turned to technology in order to remedy this issue using Automatic Sign Language. While there has been successful research around the world, this is not possible in South Africa as there is no South African Sign Language (SASL) database available. This research aims to develop a SASL static gesture database using a data glove as the first step towards developing a comprehensive database that encapsulates the entire language. Unfortunately commercial data gloves are expensive and so as part of this research, a low-cost data glove will be developed for the application of Automatic Sign Language Translation. The database and data glove will be used together with Neural Networks to perform gesture classification. This will be done in order to evaluate the gesture data collected for the database. This research project has been broken down into three main sections; data glove development, database creation and gesture classification. The data glove was developed by critically reviewing the relevant literature, testing the sensors and then evaluating the overall glove for repeatability and reliability. The final data glove prototype was constructed and five participants were used to collect 31 different static gestures in three different scenarios, which range from isolated gesture collection to continuous data collection. This data was cleaned and used to train a neural network for the purpose of classification. Several training algorithms were chosen and compared to see which attained the highest classification accuracy. The data glove performed well and achieved results superior to some research and on par with other researchers’ results. The data glove achieved a repeatable angle range of 3.27 degrees resolution with a standard deviation of 1.418 degrees. This result is far below the specified 15 degrees resolution required for the research. The device remained low-cost and was more than $100 cheaper than other custom research data gloves and hundreds of dollars cheaper than commercial data gloves. A database was created using five participants and 1550 type 1 gestures, 465 type 2 gestures and 93 type 3 gestures were collected. The Resilient Back-Propagation and Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithms were considered as the training algorithms for the neural network. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm had a superior classification accuracy achieving 99.61%, 77.42% and 81.72% accuracy on the type 1, type 2 and type 3 data respectively.

Low-resource languages, including sign languages, are a challenge for machine translation research. Given the lack of parallel corpora, current researchers must be content with a small parallel corpus in a narrow domain for training a system. For this thesis, we obtained a small parallel corpus of English text and American Sign Language gloss from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We cleaned the corpus by loading it into an open-source translation memory tool, where we removed computer markup language and split the large chunks of text into sentences and phrases, creating a total of 14,247 sentence pairs. We randomly partitioned the corpus into three sections: 70% for a training set, 10% for a development set, and 20% for a test set. After downloading and installing the open-source Moses toolkit, we went through several iterations of training, translating, and evaluating the system. The final evaluation on unseen data yielded a state-of-the-art score for a low-resource language.

<p>Recognising and estimating gestures is a fundamental aspect towards translating from a sign language to a spoken language. It is a challenging problem and at the same time, a growing phenomenon in Computer Vision. This thesis presents two approaches, an example-based and a learning-based approach, for performing integrated detection, segmentation and 3D estimation of the human upper body from a single camera view. It investigates whether an upper body pose can be estimated from a database of exemplars with labelled poses. It also investigates whether an upper body pose can be estimated using skin feature extraction, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and a 3D human body model. The example-based and learning-based approaches obtained success rates of 64% and 88%, respectively. An analysis of the two approaches have shown that, although the learning-based system generally performs better than the example-based system, both approaches are suitable to recognise and estimate upper body poses in a South African sign language recognition and translation system.</p>

The most common forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) devices these dayslike the keyboard, mouse and touch interfaces, are limited to working on atwo-dimensional (2-D) surface, and thus do not provide complete freedom ofaccessibility using our hands. With the vast number of gestures a hand can perform,including the different combinations of motion of fingers, wrist and elbow, we canmake accessibility and interaction with the digital environment much more simplified,without restrictions to the physical surface. Fortunately, this is possible due to theadvancements of Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing of sensors,reducing the size of a sensor to the size of a fingernail.In this thesis we document the design and development of a smart glove systemcomprising of Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) sensors that recognize handactivity/gestures using combinations of neural networks and deep learning techniquessuch as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Convolutional Neural Network(CNN). This peripheral device is named as the Gauntlet-X1, X1 to denote thecurrent prototype version of the device. The system captures IMU data and interfaceswith the host server. In order to demonstrate this prototype as a proof of concept,we integrate to Android mobile applications based on 3-D interactivity like theAmerican Sign Language(ASL), Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR)applications and can be extended to further the use of HCI technology.

Visual-text translation is to produce textual descriptions in natural languages from images and videos. In this thesis, we investigate two topics in the field: image captioning and continuous sign language recognition, by exploring structural representations of visual content. Image captioning is to generate text descriptions for a given image. Deep learning based methods have achieved impressive performance on this topic. However, the relations among objects in an image have not been fully explored. Thus, a topic-guided local-global graph neural network is proposed to extract graph properties at both local and global levels. The local features are built with visual objects, while the global features are characterized with topics, both modelled with two individual graphs. Experimental results on the MS-COCO dataset showed that our proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art image captioning methods. Continuous Sign language recognition (SLR) takes video clips of a sign language sentence as input while producing a sentence as output in a natural language, which can be regarded as a machine translation problem. However, SLR is different from general machine translation problem because of the unique features of the input, e.g., facial expression and relationship among body parts. The facial and hand features can be extracted with neural networks while the interaction between body parts has not yet fully exploited. Therefore, a hierarchical spatio-temporal graph neural network is proposed, which takes both appearance and motion features into account and models the relationship between body parts with a hierarchical graph convolution network. Experimental results on two widely used datasets, PHOENIX-2014-T and Chinese Sign Language, show the effectiveness of our proposed method. In summary, our studies demonstrate structural representations with graph neural networks are helpful for improving the translation performance from visual content to text descriptions.

<p>This thesis investigates the use of mobile phones as service-delivery devices in a sign language machine translation system. Four sign language visualization methods were evaluated on mobile phones. Three of the methods were synthetic sign language visualization methods. Three factors were considered: the intelligibility of sign language, as rendered by the method<br>the power consumption<br>and the bandwidth usage associated with each method. The average intelligibility rate was 65%, with some methods achieving intelligibility rates of up to 92%. The average le size was 162 KB and, on average, the power consumption increased to 180% of the idle state, across all methods. This research forms part of the Integration of Signed and Verbal Communication: South African Sign Language Recognition and Animation (SASL) project at the University of the Western Cape and serves as an integration platform for the group's research. In order to perform this research a machine translation system that uses mobile phones as service-delivery devices was developed as well as a 3D Avatar for mobile phones. It was concluded that mobile phones are suitable service-delivery platforms for sign language machine translation systems.</p>

This thesis is a critical account of a qualitative, evaluative study into the translation processes and practices in use within the BSL Bible Translation Project, undertaken as a collaborative doctoral studentship funded by the AHRC/ESRC1. It has proceeded collaboratively, valuing the stories, knowledge and experiences of the participants. The data‐set presented herein was generated by means of participant observation and interviews with Project Team members. It was analysed in its digital, visual form using an inductive, thematic approach, and is presented with minimal commentary (Chapters 4 and 5). Following this presentation, the data‐set is further reflected upon in order to shed light upon existing understandings of sign language text composition strategies, team translation praxis, intermediality and sacrament (Chapters 6, 7 and 8). The evidence presented in this thesis represents a new source of data and offers valuable insights into translation and exegetical practice in its own right and, I will argue, as a means of human flourishing. This thesis problematizes previous descriptions of Signed Languages as ‘picture‐languages’, identifying two ways in which such descriptions have been unhelpful, even inaccurate. Firstly, that this nomenclature, with its association with picture‐books and pre‐linguistic skills, has contributed to the persistence of perceptions of d/Deaf people as being linguistically less‐able than their non‐Deaf peers and secondly, that such descriptions are deficient because they fail to fully capture the complex nature of Signed Languages. This thesis argues for a re engagement with the inherently cinematographic nature of Signed Languages and explores ways in which this would yield benefits in the fields of Deaf education, the teaching of Signed Languages to second‐language learners, and the training of interpreters and translators. This thesis will also argue that the translation practices of the BSL Bible Translation Project constitute a clear example of Deaf people engaging in metalinguistic reflection on their own language‐use. That is, that the data provide clear evidence of literate thought, specifically of Signed Language literacy in action, and is further evidence in support of the growing confidence and agency within the Deaf Community with regards to the status and the rich linguistic and material properties of BSL, including its suitability as a mediator of the sacred. This thesis will go on to offer reflections on what the data have to tell us about the nature of Biblical texts; both through how they are produced, and the nature of those texts as artefacts and bearers of religious meanings. Engaging with existing understandings of sacrament and incarnation, including the possibility that the act of Bible reading and translation can be said to constitute a sacramental activity, it argues that this is particularly so when such reading and ‘speaking’ of the text occurs through Signed Language.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study proposes a concept model for an electronic bilingual dictionary of sign language and Afrikaans (or English, or any other spoken language) that can be applied in practice by the De la Bat School for the Deaf in Worcester – or any school of similar organisation – to compile a bilingual dictionary in which it is not only possible to look up a sign via a written word but also to look up a sign even if the user does not necessarily know the written equivalent. This is important as it will mean that, for the first time in South Africa, a Deaf user would not have to be literate in any written language to use a dictionary in his or her own language. At the same time a hearing user would be able to look up a sign of which the meaning is unknown, for example when a sign is noticed in a conversation or an unknown context. The sign language dictionaries currently available in South Africa are little more than alphabetically arranged (or sometimes thematically arranged) lists in which the written language offers the only access to the content. As per introduction the first four chapters provide general discussions of sign language, the Deaf in South Africa, lexicography and sign language dictionaries. The discussions which follow in the remaining chapters focus on the decisions which have to be made in terms of the proposed dictionary’s content and design. These chapters contain recommendations regarding equivalent relations between sign language and Afrikaans, several outer texts which could be included in the frame structure, the characteristics of the electronic database from which the dictionary will be generated, as well as decisions that have to be made about the microstructure. In the last chapter the lexicographic model for an electronic bilingual Foundation Phase dictionary of South African Sign Language and Afrikaans is provided with complete examples.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie stel 'n konsepmodel voor vir 'n elektroniese tweetalige woordeboek van gebaretaal en Afrikaans (of Engels, of enige ander gesproke taal) wat deur die De la Bat Skool vir Dowes in Worcester – of enige ander skool of soortgelyke instansie – in die praktyk aangewend sou kon word om 'n tweetalige woordeboek saam te stel waarin dit nie slegs moontlik is om 'n gebaar via 'n geskrewe woord op te soek nie, maar ook om 'n gebaar op te soek sonder dat die gebruiker noodwendig die geskrewe ekwivalent ken. Dit is belangrik aangesien dit die eerste keer in Suid- Afrika sal beteken dat 'n Dowe gebruiker nie in enige geskrewe taal geletterd hoef te wees om 'n woordeboek in sy of haar eie taal te gebruik nie. Terselfdertyd sal 'n horende gebruiker wat gebaretaal leer in staat wees om 'n gebaar op te soek waarvan die betekenis onbekend is, soos wanneer 'n gebaar in 'n gesprek of onbekende konteks opgemerk word. Die gebaretaalwoordeboeke wat op die oomblik in Suid-Afrika bestaan, is weinig meer as alfabetiese (of soms tematiese) lyste waarin die geskrewe taal die enigste toegang tot die inhoud bied. Ter inleiding word algemene besprekings van gebaretaal, Dowes in Suid-Afrika, leksikografie en gebaretaalwoordeboeke in die eerste vier hoofstukke verskaf. Die besprekings wat in die hoofstukke daarop volg, fokus in meer besonderhede op die besluite wat t.o.v. die voorgestelde woordeboek se inhoud en ontwerp gemaak moet word. Dié hoofstukke bevat aanbevelings rakende ekwivalentverhoudings tussen gebaretaal en Afrikaans, verskeie buitetekste wat in die raamstruktuur gebruik sou kon word, die eienskappe van die elektroniese databasis waaruit die woordeboek gegenereer word asook besluite wat oor die mikrostruktuur geneem moet word. In die laaste hoofstuk word die leksikografiese model vir 'n elektroniese tweetalige grondslagfasewoordeboek van Suid-Afrikaanse Gebaretaal en Afrikaans met volledige voorbeelde uiteengesit.<br>Nasionale Navorsingstigting<br>Harry Crosleystigting

This work is an attempt to answer one simple question: What is Hamlet? Based on the material of Hamlet translations into Russian, the dissertation scrutinizes the problems of literary canon formation, translation and textuality proceeding in two parallel directions: the historical analysis of canon formation in translation and the conceptualization of Hamlet’s textuality. The methodological framework is defined in the context of Jurij Lotman’s semiotics of culture, which is invaluable for an understanding of the mechanisms of literary evolution, the theory of translation and literary canon formation. The study examines the history of Hamlet in Russia from 1748 until the present with special attention to analysis of the canonical translations, theater productions of the Shakespearean classic and the phenomenon of Hamletism. The case study of the 1964 film by Grigorij Kozincev focuses on the problem of the cinematographic canon of Hamlet. Further, the work scrutinizes various types of representation of Hamlet in such semiotic systems as the theater, the cinema, and the pictorial arts, and also examines how Hamlet functions as a specific type of sign. The final section returns to the question of canon formation and textuality. The results of the research show that 1) the literary canon appears to be closely associated with the concepts of genre and myth, 2) in order to become canonical it is imperative for a literary text to function on the level of microcanon and to be represented in modes other than the written.

Este trabajo se centra en la traducción al español del poema de Andrew Kaufman “Signs of the Cross”, que se encuentra en su libro Earth’s Ends. El poema presenta una visión familiar, al mismo tiempo que extranjerizante, de los pueblos latinoamericanos a los que describe. Se tratan en él temas como el cambio constante, la desacralización de lo sagrado, la reescritura de la historia, la resiliencia de algunos de los pueblos latinoamericanos, el peso del pasado sobre ellos, así como la presencia del cristianismo y los símbolos de la cruz presentes en acontecimientos históricos importantes, la religión, la vida cotidiana y la naturaleza. Junto con la traducción del poema, se proporciona un análisis detallado de las nueve partes que lo componen, así como comentarios sobre las principales dificultades de traducción. Se emprendió la tarea de traducir como un ejercicio de back-translation figurativo, mediante el cual se devolvió el poema al idioma de la cultura que lo inspiró: el español, idioma que además ayuda a completar el significado del texto.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:14:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Patricia M S Fonseca Fanaya.pdf: 6430512 bytes, checksum: dba80d7c1af7397d7f7b5406b1a6b3e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-08<br>Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior<br>The object of this research is the process of emergence of the complex subject-sign, through a translation process that occurs from negotiated solutions between human beings and technology. The main problem that this research seeks to answer can be stated as follows: Does the principle of translation, which is inherent to the semiotic and cognitive process, act in modifying the subjective condition within digital networks? The hypotheses are: 1) The principle of translation is inherent to semiotic cognitive process; 2) The subject that emerges from the digital networks presents himself in multiple translated versions; 3) These translated versions are configured by means of an autopoietic, interpretive and collaborative process. From this perspective, the aim of this study was to seek a differentiated understanding of translation which moves away from the traditional approaches based heavily on the theories of linguistic exchanges. My proposition is an renewed approach based on a semiotic and cognitive perspective, which aims to rethink the condition of the subject that emerges from the entangled web of mediation active in cyberspace. Both the problem and the purpose of this research require exploring the connections among the fields of communication, semiotics, philosophy and cognitive sciences. It follows a detailed discussion of the subject by means of theoretical frameworks and commented cases. The theoretical frameworks are: Varela and Maturana and the theory of autopoiesis; the expansion of autopoietic theory to the humanities by Félix Guattari; the theory of semiospheres by Yuri Lotman and his interpreters Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kotov and Kull; the semiotic theory of C.S. Peirce, with special emphasis given to his theory of the interpretants; and the mind in life theory by Evan Thompson. Commented cases are extracted directly from the digital networks<br>O objeto desta pesquisa é o processo de emergência do sujeito-signo-complexo, por meio de um processo de tradução que se dá a partir das soluções negociadas entre o humano e o tecnológico. A questão de pesquisa é a seguinte: o princípio da tradução, inerente ao processo semiótico e cognitivo, atua na modificação da condição subjetiva nas redes digitais? As hipóteses assim se expressam: 1) o princípio da tradução é inerente ao processo semiótico cognitivo; 2) o sujeito que emerge nas redes digitais se apresenta em múltiplas versões traduzidas de si mesmo; 3) essas versões traduzidas configuram-se por meio de processo autopoiético, interpretativo e colaborativo. Tendo isso em vista, o objetivo deste estudo foi buscar uma compreensão diferenciada da tradução que se afasta das tradicionais abordagens baseadas fortemente nas teorias de trocas linguísticas , propondo uma abordagem da perspectiva semiótica e cognitiva que tem por finalidade repensar a condição do sujeito que emerge da emaranhada teia de mediações atuantes no ciberespaço. A questão e o objetivo propostos exigem que a pesquisa explore as conexões entre os campos da comunicação, da semiótica, da filosofia e das ciências cognitivas. Disso decorre a discussão detalhada do tema por meio de referenciais teóricos e de casos comentados. Os referenciais teóricos são os seguintes: Varela e Maturana e a teoria da autopoiese; a expansão da teoria autopoiética para a área das ciências humanas pelo recorte de Félix Guattari; a teoria das semiosferas de Yuri Lotman e de seus intérpretes Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kotov e Kull; a teoria semiótica de C. S. Peirce, com especial ênfase na teoria dos interpretantes; e a teoria da mente na vida, de Evan Thompson. Os casos comentados são extraídos diretamente das redes de relacionamento digitais

Les logiciels Traduction Assistée par Ordinateur (TAO) proposent des outils variés pour faciliter la pratique professionnelle des traducteurs, en termes de gain de temps ou de confort. Cependant, et ce malgré la demande croissante de contenu traduit et accessible en LSF, on ne compte aujourd’hui aucune tentative pour équiper les traducteurs français/LSF avec un logiciel de TAO. Le problème qui nous intéresse ici consiste en la spécification d’un tel logiciel. Les langues des signes sont visuelles et iconiques, elles disposent de leur grammaire propre tout comme d’une organisation du discours particulière, mais d’aucune forme écrite. Cette absence d’écrit constitue un noeud problématique en termes de TAO, puisque les logiciels reposent actuellement sur des structures écrites éditables, et sur le fait que la concaténation des segments traduits correspond à la traduction de la concaténation des segments source (ce que nous appelons principe de linéarité). Nous cherchons à identifier les points de conflit entre les LS et le modèle actuel de la TAO de sorte à pouvoir y proposer des solutions. Les travaux impliquent tant l’adaptation de modules déjà existants que la création de nouveaux outils à intégrer dans un logiciel, en nous basant sur la pratique des professionnels<br>Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) software offers various tools to facilitate the professional practice of translators, in terms of time saving or comfort. However, despite the increasing demand for translated and accessible content in French, no attempt has been made to equip French/LSF translators with CAT software. We interest ourselves in the specification of such software. Sign languages are visual and iconic, they have their own grammar as well as a particular organization of speech, but no written form. The absence of writing is a problematic node in terms of CAT, since software currently relies on editable written structures, and on the fact that the concatenation of the translated segments corresponds to the translation of the concatenation of the source segments (what we call the principle of linearity). We seek to identify points of conflict between LS and the current CAT model so that we can propose solutions. This work involves both the adaptation of existing modules and the creation of new tools to be integrated into software, based on the practice of professionals

The purpose of this project is to examine the extent to which sign language can be used as a means of communicating the text for hearing audiences attending classical vocal recitals. The project discusses historical practices for providing text translation of classical repertoire sung in foreign languages and gives an account of the increasing popularity of sign language interpretation for hearing audiences within the contemporary, commercial music industry. A trial performance is undertaken in order to examine the effectiveness of the idea in the context of classical vocal music. Feedback is gathered from the audience and singer’s perspective during performance and through observations made by studying the video documenting the performance.<br><p>The sounding part of the work consists of the following recording: NJones100619. The Corona virus situation spring semester 2020 has caused limitations in the recording possibilities. The recording may be supplemented. </p>

Depuis la loi du 11-02-2005 pour l’égalité des droits et des chances, les lieux ouverts au public doivent accueillir les Sourds en Langue des Signes Française (LSF). C’est dans le cadre du développement d’outils technologiques de diffusion de LSF que nous avons travaillé, plus particulièrement au niveau de la traduction automatique du français écrit vers la LSF. Notre thèse commence par un état de l’art relatif aux connaissances sur la LSF (ressources disponibles et supports d’expression de la LSF) avant d’approfondir des notions de grammaire descriptive. Notre hypothèse de travail est la suivant : la LSF est une langue et, à ce titre, la traduction automatique lui est applicable.Nous décrivons ensuite les spécifications linguistiques pour le traitement automatique, en fonction des observations mises en avant dans l’état de l’art et des propositions de nos informateurs. Nous détaillons notre méthodologie et présentons l’avancée de nos travaux autour de la formalisation des données linguistiques à partir des spécificités de la LSF dont certaines (model verbal, modification adjectivale et adverbiale, organisation des substantifs, problématiques de l’accord) ont nécessité un traitement plus approfondi. Nous présentons le cadre applicatif dans lequel nous avons travaillé : les systèmes de traduction automatique et d’animation de personnage virtuel de France Telecom R&amp;D. Puis, après un rapide état de l’art sur les technologies avatar nous décrivons nos modalités de contrôle du moteur de synthèse de geste grâce au format d’échange mis au point. Enfin, nous terminons par nos évaluations et perspectives de recherche et de développements qui pourront suivre cette Thèse.Notre approche a donné ses premiers résultats puisque nous avons atteint notre objectif de faire fonctionner la chaîne complète de traduction : de la saisie d'un énoncé en français jusqu'à la réalisation de l'énoncé correspondant en LSF par un personnage de synthèse<br>Since the law was voted the 11-02-2005 for equal rights and opportunities: places open to anyone (public places, shops, internet, etc.) should welcome the Deaf in French Sign Language (FSL). We have worked on the development of technological tools to promote LSF, especially in machine translation from written French to FSL.Our thesis begins with a presentation of knowledge on FSL (theoretical resources and ways to edit FSL) and follows by further concepts of descriptive grammar. Our working hypothesis is: FSL is a language and, therefore, machine translation is relevant.We describe the language specifications for automatic processing, based on scientific knowledge and proposals of our native FSL speaker informants. We also expose our methodology, and do present the advancement of our work in the formalization of linguistic data based on the specificities of FSL which certain (verbs scheme, adjective and adverb modification, organization of nouns, agreement patterns) require further analysis.We do present the application framework in which we worked on: the machine translation system and virtual characters animation system of France Telecom R&amp;D.After a short avatar technology presentation, we explain our control modalities of the gesture synthesis engine through the exchange format that we developed.Finally, we conclude with an evaluation, researches and developments perspectives that could follow this thesis.Our approach has produced its first results since we have achieved our goal of running the full translation chain: from the input of a sentence in French to the realization of the corresponding sentence in FSL with a synthetic character

This study tested whether an American Sign Language (ASL) MMPI short form, the Brauer-Gallaudet MMPI-168 (B-G MMPI-168), could discriminate between groups of deaf adults with and without psychopathology. B-G MMPI-168 and MMPI-168 profiles were also compared in deaf adults without a history of psychopathology. Independent variables were history of mental health treatment, language of administration and reading ability. Dependent variables were MMPI-168 and B-G MMPI-168 validity and clinical scale evaluations. Fifty-nine deaf adults from the community and outpatient counseling services completed demographic information on a questionnaire developed especially for this study. Subjects were divided into Clinic and Control groups based on history (Clinic) or no history (Control) of mental health treatment. Reading Comprehension scores (Advanced Stanford Achievement Test) of Control subjects determined placement in Control (I), (11th grade and above) and Control (II), (6-11 grade) groups. All subjects took the B-G MMPI-168. Control subjects took the MMPI-168 at home within two weeks. Ten dollars was earned for participation. Results indicated that Clinic and Control (II) groups were not accurately discriminated by B-G MMPI-168 profiles. The "hit rate" for the Clinic group was 96.5 percent, but only 40.0% of the Control subjects were correctly classified as Not Disturbed. This version of the B-G MMPI-168 was judged unacceptable for clinical use until items are revised. Level of reading ability was not a significant factor in the clinical validity of the MMPI-168. The "hit rates" of correct classification of Control (I) and Control (II) subjects as Not Disturbed, 58.8 and 46.2, respectively, were unacceptable. Language of administration was not a significant factor in the clinical validity of Control group "168" profiles. B-G MMPI-168 profiles showed more psychopathology than MMPI-168 profiles, but both tests had unacceptably high percentages of Control subjects classified as Disturbed. Revision of B-G MMPI-168 items was recommended so that profiles can accurately discriminate between Clinic and Control groups. The MMPI-168 was recommended for use as part of a personality assessment battery for deaf adults having 12th grade equivalent or higher reading level.

Den här studien behandlar fenomenet tolkspråk – tanken om att tolkat språk skiljer sig från icke-tolkat språk. Översättningsvetenskapen och dess motsvarighet översättarspråk har utgjort en stor inspirationskälla till arbetet, då forskningen kommit längre där. Ett forskningsområde behandlar så kallade översättningsuniversalier – universella regler eller lagar för hur översatt språk ser ut. En av dessa lagar kallas för normalisering. I studien undersöks om normalisering är applicerbart även på teckenspråkstolkning, med utgångspunkt i påståendet att normalisering kan vara synligt i översatt text som en överrepresentation av typiska målspråksdrag. För att undersöka detta har två jämförbara korpusar använts, dels Svensk teckenspråkskorpus (SSLC) med icke-tolkade teckenspråkstexter, dels Korpus för simultantolkade teckenspråkstexter (KST) med tolkade teckenspråkstexter. Det typiska, teckenspråkiga drag som valts för undersökningen är det tecken som glosas KOPPLA. Förekomsten av tecknet i de båda korpusarna har undersökts för att kunna upptäcka en eventuell överrepresentation i KST. Resultaten visar att KOPPLA mycket riktigt är överrepresenterat i KST, men att det är svårt att generalisera på grund av flera begränsande faktorer.<br>This essay is concerned with the subject of interpretese – the idea that interpreted language differs from non-interpreted language. Within translation studies, the corresponding term is translationese, and this essay draws upon much of the research in this field, as it is more developed. One particular area of research into translationese revolves around so called translation universals, or universal features of translation. They could be described as rules or laws that define translated language. One of those universals is called normalisation. This essay seeks to answer if normalisation also exists in Sign Language interpreting, with reference to exaggeration of typical target language patterns. Two comparable corpora were used, Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) with non-interpreted Sign Language texts, and Korpus för simultantolkade teckenspråkstexter (KST) with interpreted Sign Language texts. The typical target language pattern that was chosen for the investigation is the Swedish sign KOPPLA. Instances of the sign were investigated in both corpora, to spot any exaggeration in KST. The results show that KOPPLA is in fact overrepresented in KST, but that one should be careful to generalize, as several limiting factors were at play.

In Australia, there is only one, newly established, dedicated mental health service catering specifically for the signing *Deaf community. It is staffed by four part-time hearing professionals and based in Brisbane. There are currently no Deaf psychologists or psychiatrists and there is no valid or reliable empirical evidence on outcomes for Deaf people accessing specialised or mainstream mental health services. Further compounding these issues, is the fact that there are no sign language versions of the most common standardised mental health or psychological instruments available to clinicians in Australia. Contemporary counselling literature is acknowledging the role of the therapeutic alliance and the impact of 'common factors' on therapeutic outcomes. However, these issues are complicated by the relationship between the Deaf client and the hearing therapist being a cross-cultural exchange. The disability model of deafness is contentious and few professionals in Australia have the requisite knowledge and understanding of deafness from a cultural perspective to attend to the therapeutic relationship with this in mind. Consequently, Deaf people are severely disadvantaged by the current lack of services, resources and skilled professionals in the field of deafness and psychology in this country. The primary aim of the following program of research has been to propose a model for culturally affirmative service delivery and to provide clinicians with tools to evaluate the effect of their therapeutic work with Deaf people seeking mental health treatment. The research document is presented as a thesis by publication and comprises four specific objectives formulated in response to the lack of existing services and resources. The first objective was to explore the use of social constructionist counselling techniques and a reflecting team with Deaf clients, hearing therapists and an interpreter. Following the establishment of a pilot counselling clinic, indepth semi-structured interviews were conducted with two long-term clients following the one year pilot of this service. These interviews generated recommendations for the development of a new 'enriched' model of counselling to be implemented and evaluated in later stages of the research program. The second objective was to identify appropriate psychometric measures that could be translated into Australian Sign Language (Auslan) for research into efficacy, effectiveness and counselling outcomes. Two instruments were identified as potentially suitable; the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS), a measure of global functioning, and the Session Rating Scale (SRS), a measure of therapeutic alliance. A specialised team of bi-lingual and bi-cultural interpreters, native signers and the primary researcher for this thesis, produced the ORS-Auslan and the SRS-Auslan in DVD format, using the translation and back-translation process. The third objective was to establish the validity and reliability of these new Auslan measures based on normative data from the Deaf community. Data from the ORS-Auslan was collected from one clinical and one non-clinical sample of Deaf people. Statistical analyses revealed that the ORS-Auslan is reliable, valid and adequately distinguishes between clinical and non-clinical presentations. Furthermore, construct validity has been established using a yet to be validated sign language version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 items (DASS-21), providing a platform for further research using the DASS-21 with Deaf people. The fourth objective was to evaluate counselling outcomes following the implementation of an enriched counselling service, based on the findings generated by the first objective, and using the newly translated Auslan measures. A second university counselling clinic was established and implemented over the course of one year. Practice-based evidence guided the research and the ORS-Auslan and the SRS-Auslan were administered at every session and provided outcome data on Deaf clients' global functioning. Data from six clients over the course of ten months indicated that this culturally affirmative model was an effective approach for these six clients. This is the first time that outcome data have been collected in Australia using valid and reliable Auslan measures to establish preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of any therapeutic intervention for clinical work with adult, signing Deaf clients. The research generated by this thesis contributes theoretical knowledge, professional development and practical resources that can be used by a variety of mental health clinicians in the context of mental health service delivery to Deaf clients in Australia.

Appropriate digital citizenship skills are considered essential for modern professionals, including signed language interpreters. However, little is known about the experiences and practices of interpreter educators regarding digital citizenship. This exploratory qualitative interview study was conducted to examine the experiences and practices of interpreter educators related to incorporating opportunities for digital citizenship skill-building in their teaching practice. A conceptual framework based on digital citizenship theory guided development of this study. Data were collected from interviews of 6 interpreter educators in bachelor-degree programs in American Sign Language/English interpreting across the United States. Data sets were analyzed through open and axial coding and assessed for themes and patterns. Findings of the study indicated that interpreter educators were aware of elements of digital citizenship but were not knowledgeable about institutional or other policies, that they prioritized the soft skills of digital citizenship, and that they assumed their students acquired the technical skills of digital citizenship elsewhere. Findings may lead to better informed pedagogical decisions about incorporating digital citizenship into instruction, better prepared new professionals, and can contribute to positive social change for practitioners and the consumers they serve.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:01:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Keli Simoes Xavier.pdf: 826077 bytes, checksum: b5d9809149b6a24c9d0827fe920814dc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-10-05<br>Este trabalho discute o intérprete de Libras na escola inclusiva apontando os limites e possibilidades desse novo protagonista do sistema educacional. Tem como objetivo entender como se dá a inserção do intérprete no contexto escolar, priorizando os anos finais do ensino fundamental. Apresenta, de forma pontual, o percurso histórico da política educacional inclusiva, traçando paralelos com a história da educação de surdos. Consecutivamente, expõe os dispositivos legais que inserem o intérprete de Libras na educação e situa a problemática que emerge com a entrada desse profissional no contexto escolar. Sem perder de vista a concepção de linguagem defendida por Bakhtin, traz a tona estudos que versam sobre a interpretação e particularmente a interpretação de língua de sinais. Pesquisas de autores como Ronice Muller de Quadros, Regina Maria de Souza, Mauren Elisabeth Medeiros Vieira, Vanessa Martins, Cristina Broglia Feitosa de Lacerda, Patrícia Tuxi, Karla Patrícia Ramos da Costa , entre outros, são apresentados compondo assim a revisão de literatura, sobre o intérprete de Libras na educação. Ao fazer considerações sobre a interpretação nos processos de ensino aprendizagem do aluno surdo, essa dissertação traz alguns autores, entre eles destacamos Lev Semenovich Vigotski, Angel Pino Sirgado, Maria Cecília R. Góes. A opção metodológica adotada é a do Estudo de Caso do tipo etnográfico, que tem como lócus uma escola da rede municipal de ensino de Vitória que, na realidade do estado do Espírito Santo, é pioneira na proposta de se ter intérpretes educacionais atuando com alunos surdos em sala de aula regular. Por meio de observações sistematizadas e entrevistas, são apresentados e analisados dados que explanam sobre a política bilíngue municipal e esclarecem a atuação do intérprete de Libras junto à equipe bilíngue e corpo docente da escola pesquisada. As relações de poder também surgem como dado nessa pesquisa e são analisadas a partir da figuração estabelecidos outsiders de Elias e Scotson. Como resultado desse estudo, chegou-se a algumas assertivas, das quais foram destacadas três para o encerramento desse trabalho. A primeira delas diz respeito à necessidade de se repensar a formação do intérprete que atua no campo educacional; a segunda versa sobre as condições de trabalho, pouco favoráveis, que o intérprete vem encontrando no ambiente escolar; e a terceira refere-se à maneira como a equipe bilíngue é inserida e vista no ambiente escolar, uma vez que tal fato interfere diretamente na maneira como o interprete se relaciona com o ambiente escolar. O estudo indica a necessidade de se ampliar a discussão sobre as especificidades do trabalho de interpretação no espaço educacional<br>This paper discusses the interpreter of Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) in the inclusive school pointing out the limits and possibilities of this new protagonist of the educational system. This study aims to understand how the interpreter is inserted in the school context focusing on the final years of primary school. It is also presented the historical trajectory of the inclusive educational policy, presenting parallels with the history of the education of deaf people. Consecutively, this paper exposes the legal devices that establish the interpreter of Libras in education and it also places the problem that emerges with the introduction of this professional in the school context. Having in mind the conception of language advocated by Bakhtin it is also considered studies that deal with the rendering, mainly the interpretation of sign language. Studies conducted by authors like Ronice Muller de Quadros, Regina Maria de Souza, Mauren Elisabeth Medeiros Vieira, Vanessa Vanessa Regina de Oliveira Martins, Cristina Broglia Feitosa de Lacerda, Patrícia Tuxi, Karla Patrícia Ramos da Costa, among others, are presented as been part of the literature review about the interpreter of Libras in education. The present study brings some authors, for instance Lev Semenovich Vigotski, Angel Pino Sirgado, Maria Cecília R. Góes, when the rendering in the process of teaching and learning of deaf students is considered. The methodology adopted is the ethnographic case study, which has a public municipal school from Vitória as its locus. In the State of Espírito Santo, this school is considered to be a pioneer in the proposal of having educational interpreters working with deaf students in a regular classroom. Through systematic observations and interviews it is presented the data that not only explain the municipal bilingual policy but also clarify the role of the interpreter of Libras in the bilingual staff as well as part of the teacher s department in the school studied. The relationships of power also emerge in this study as data analyzed from the aspect established-outsiders by Elias and Scotson. As a result of this study, it was to some assertions, of which three were outstanding for the closure of this work. The first, concerns the need to rethink the formation of the interpreter who works in the educational field, the second is about the working conditions, unfavorable, that the interpreter has found in the school environment, and the third refers to the way bilingual staff is inserted and order in the school environment, since this fact directly affects the way we interpret it relates to the school environment. This paper indicates the importance of increasing the discussion on the specificities of the work of the interpreters in the educational environment

En partant du cadre conceptuel des modèles IDRC (Interprétation-Décisions-Ressources- Contraintes) et du modèle d'Efforts de l'interprétation simultanée de Daniel Gile entre langues vocales, nous tenterons d'analyser le processus de l'interprétation en langue des signes et étudierons la charge cognitive inhérente au passage d'une langue vocale (canal audio-vocal), à une langue signée (canal visuo-gestuel). Nous analyserons en premier lieu l’ensemble des contraintes concourant à l’exercice de l’interprétation en langue des signes pouvant se distinguer de celles généralement observées en interprétation entre langues vocales (nous incluons les langues vocales syntaxiquement très éloignées) telles que les contraintes socio-économiques, les contraintes linguistiques et enfin les contraintes d’espace. Nous procéderons ensuite à une analyse cognitive du processus de l’interprétation en nous référant au modèle d'Efforts de l’interprétation simultanée de Gile (Effort d'Écoute et d'Analyse, Effort de Mémorisation à court terme, Effort de Production, Effort de Coordination de ces trois activités simultanées), et nous chercherons à envisager sa transposition aux langues des signes. Pour mieux comprendre les mécanismes constitutifs du processus, nous observerons particulièrement le concept de scénarisation (Séro-Guillaume, 2008) pour une première analyse de la charge cognitive de l’interprète en action. Cette capacité de représentation synthétique visuelle est-elle plus ou moins grande si on prend en compte le degré d'abstraction du discours, la technicité de l'énoncé, le manque de correspondances lexicales, le contexte de l'interprétation (pédagogique, conférence, etc.), la préparation ? Notre analyse du processus se base sur un corpus constitué de plusieurs études empiriques d’interprétations vers la langue des signes : une étude semi-expérimentale, une étude de cas naturaliste et une étude expérimentale, ainsi que sur des interviews d’interprètes et un focus group. Les observations faites sur l’ensemble de ces études nous ont permis de croiser nos données et de dégager les éléments pertinents de nos résultats pour une avancée dans la compréhension du processus cognitif de l’interprétation en langue des signes<br>Taking as its point of departure the conceptual framework provided by the IDRC models (Interpreting-Decisions-Resources-Constraints) and Daniel Gile’s Effort model of simultaneous interpreting between spoken languages, this thesis aims to analyse the process of sign language interpreting and study the cognitive load inherent in encoding information from a spoken language (an auditory-vocal modality of language production) into signed language (a vision and gesture-based modality). The first part of the work analyses the set of constraints involved in the exercise of sign language interpreting, as distinguished from those generally observed to apply between spoken languages (including languages syntactically far apart), such as socio-economic constraints, linguistic constraints and, finally, spatial constraints. There follows a cognitive analysis of the interpreting process with reference to Gile’s Effort model of simultaneous interpreting (Listening and Analysis Effort, Memory Effort, Production Effort, Effort of Coordination of these three simultaneous activities), with an attempt to envisage transposing its application to sign language. In order to gain better understanding of the constituent mechanisms of the process, initial analysis of the cognitive load of the interpreter in action accords particular attention to the concept of scénarisation (scene-staging) (Séro-Guillaume, 2008). Is this capacity for creating a visual picture from sequential meaning greater or lesser when factors such as the degree of abstraction of the speech, the technicality of its content, a lack of lexical correspondence, the interpreting context (educational setting, conference setting, etc), and the amount of preparation are taken into account? Analysis of the process is based upon a corpus comprising several empirical studies of interpreting into sign language: a semi-experimental study, a naturalistic case study, and an experimental study, as well as on interpreter interviews and a focus group. The observations drawn from all of these studies have enabled cross-referencing of our data and the identification of the relevant elements of our research results in order to advance understanding of the cognitive process of sign language interpreting

Submitted by Clebson Anjos (clebson.leandro54@gmail.com) on 2016-02-15T21:36:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2545614 bytes, checksum: d022fd3dbe168cb8f6486517b7db1286 (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-15T21:36:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2545614 bytes, checksum: d022fd3dbe168cb8f6486517b7db1286 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-26<br>Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES<br>Deaf people communicate naturally using visual-spatial languages, called sign languages. The sign languages (SL) are recognized as official languages in many countries, but the problems faced by deaf people to access to information remains. As a result, they have difficult to exercise their citizenship and to access information in LS. In order to minimize this problem, some works have been developed related to the machine translation of spoken languages to sign languages. However, these solutions have some limitations, since they have to generate contents for deaf with the same quality to the listeners. Thus, this work aims to develop a solution for machine translation to Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) addressing syntactic-semantic issues. This solution includes a LIBRAS machine translation component; a rule description language, modeled to describe morphosyntactic-semantic machine translation rules; the definition of a grammar exploring these aspects; and the integration of these elements with VLibras, a machine translation service of digital contents in Brazilian Portuguese to LIBRAS. To evaluate the solution, some computational tests were performed using WER and BLEU metrics, along with some tests with Brazilian deaf users and LIBRAS specialists. The results show that the proposed approach could improve the results of the current version of VLIBRAS.<br>Pessoas surdas se comunicam naturalmente usando linguagens viso-espaciais, denominadas línguas de sinais. No entanto, apesar das línguas de sinais (LS), em muitos países, serem reconhecidas como língua, os problemas enfrentados pelos surdos no tocante ao acesso a informação permanecem. Em consequência disso, observa-se uma grande dificuldade dos surdos exercerem a sua cidadania e terem acesso à informação através das LS, o que acaba geralmente implicando em atraso linguístico e de aquisição do conhecimento. Visando propor soluções alternativas para minimizar a marginalização dos surdos, alguns trabalhos vêm sendo desenvolvidos relacionados à tradução automática de línguas orais para línguas de sinais. No entanto, as soluções existentes apresentam muitas limitações, pois precisam garantir que o conteúdo disponibilizado aos surdos chegue com a mesma qualidade que aos ouvintes. Neste sentido, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver uma solução para tradução automática para LIBRAS com adequação sintático-semântica. Essa solução envolve um componente de tradução automática para LIBRAS; uma linguagem formal de descrição de regras, modelada para criar regras de tradução sintático-semânticas; a definição de uma gramática explorando esses aspectos; e a integração desses elementos no serviço VLibras, um serviço de tradução automática de conteúdos digitais em Português para LIBRAS. Para avaliar a solução, alguns testes computacionais utilizando as métricas WER e BLEU e com usuários surdos e ouvintes da LIBRAS foram realizados para aferir a qualidade da saída gerada pela solução. Os resultados mostram que a abordagem proposta conseguiu melhorar os resultados da versão atual do VLibras.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TiagoMUA_TESE.pdf: 1442352 bytes, checksum: a9909ef0bb9ebf04b3cad967bbf8be1c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-14<br>Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico<br>Deaf people have serious difficulties to access information. The support for sign languages is rarely addressed in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Furthermore, in scientific literature, there is a lack of works related to machine translation for sign languages in real-time and open-domain scenarios, such as TV. To minimize these problems, in this work, we propose a solution for automatic generation of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) video tracks into captioned digital multimedia contents. These tracks are generated from a real-time machine translation strategy, which performs the translation from a Brazilian Portuguese subtitle stream (e.g., a movie subtitle or a closed caption stream). Furthermore, the proposed solution is open-domain and has a set of mechanisms that exploit human computation to generate and maintain their linguistic constructions. Some implementations of the proposed solution were developed for digital TV, Web and Digital Cinema platforms, and a set of experiments with deaf users was developed to evaluate the main aspects of the solution. The results showed that the proposed solution is efficient and able to generate and embed LIBRAS tracks in real-time scenarios and is a practical and feasible alternative to reduce barriers of deaf to access information, especially when human interpreters are not available<br>Os surdos enfrentam s?rias dificuldades para acessar informa??es. As Tecnologias de Informa??o e Comunica??o (TIC) quando s?o desenvolvidas dificilmente levam em considera??o os requisitos espec?ficos destes usu?rios especiais. O suporte para l?nguas de sinais, por exemplo, ? raramente explorado nessas tecnologias. Al?m disso, as solu??es presentes na literatura relacionadas a tradu??o autom?tica para l?nguas de sinais s?o restritas a um dom?nio de aplica??o espec?fico ou n?o s?o vi?veis para cen?rios que necessitam de tradu??o em tempo real, como, por exemplo, na TV. Para reduzir esses problemas, neste trabalho ? proposta uma solu??o para gera??o autom?tica de trilhas em L?ngua Brasileira de Sinais (LIBRAS) em conte?dos digitais multim?dia legendados. As trilhas de LIBRAS s?o geradas a partir de uma estrat?gia de tradu??o autom?tica e em tempo real para LIBRAS, que realiza a tradu??o a partir de fluxos de legendas (como, por exemplo, legendas ou closed caption) em l?ngua portuguesa. Al?m disso, a solu??o proposta ? de dom?nio geral e dotada de um conjunto de mecanismos que exploram a colabora??o e a computa??o humana para gerar e manter suas constru??es ling??sticas de forma eficiente. Implementa??es da solu??o proposta foram desenvolvidas para as plataformas de TV Digital, Web e Cinema Digital, e um conjunto de experimentos, incluindo testes com usu?rios surdos, foi desenvolvido para avaliar os principais aspectos da solu??o. Os resultados mostraram que a solu??o proposta ? eficiente, capaz de gerar e embarcar as trilhas de LIBRAS em cen?rios que exigem tradu??o em tempo real, al?m de ser uma alternativa pr?tica e vi?vel para redu??o das barreiras de acesso ? informa??o dos surdos, especialmente quando int?rpretes humanos n?o est?o dispon?veis

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:44:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 6164.pdf: 2843581 bytes, checksum: 3a331da57830b0482d99187cc3a8378f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-16<br>This research aimed to analyze and discuss the work of the Educational Interpreter (IE), which is a recent professional in our country, and the currently researches on their performance in the classroom are incipient in order to better understanding of the practices, strategies and creations in the process of translation and language interpretation to/from Brazilian Sign Language. This thesis aimed to uncover what is behind the work of interpretation from one language to another, what factors influence either positively or negative, the performance of the IE, considering the authorship, the another s discourse, the polysemy of the language involved, and, specially, the creation or transcreation. This research is based on Bakhtinian theoretical frameworks (2009, 2010), because we believe that the language is a concrete activity and is related to life and its character is dialogic. It is not possible the understanding of the IE performance unless with unique acts, which are possible in a specific time and space with real interlocutors that enunciate and expect answers. In order to embrace the entire events surrounding the IE s work (even aware of the impossibility of it), this research were conducted as a qualitative investigation influenced by microethnographic approach. The data collection was done over the second semester of 2011 and it s been observed four IE during their work in four different classrooms, whose classes were taught by three teachers from the final years of elementary school in an Inclusive Educational Program school and bilingual teaching for deaf. In order to tape-record the natural and quotidian situations of the translation process conducted by the IEs we followed the classes and everything that happened during the classes. From the data collected it has selected nine episodes to be analyzed, which were divided into three main axes, titled: the collective construction of knowledge in a context of dialogue-education ; narrative supported by imagetic representations . The analysis and reflections on the IE s performance led us to the construction of a thesis that the work of Educational Interpreter is not restricted to the utterances translation and interpretations. Its daily practices go beyond this aspect. The Educational Interpreter is co-author of the discourses delivered by teachers in classroom. We assume that the classroom context is so complex that the teachers utterances would be untranslated (as some on the translation field authors have said), not because of linguistics issues or by their way of presentation, but because of lots of elements involved. Finally, we list some notes that were relevants to the Educational Interpreters training in order to contribute to these professionals from new perspectives.<br>A presente pesquisa visou analisar e discutir o fazer do Intérprete Educacional (IE), profissional recente em nosso país e cujas pesquisas sobre sua atuação, em sala de aula, mostram-se incipientes - no sentido de melhor compreender as práticas, estratégias e criações no processo de tradução e interpretação de/para a língua brasileira de sinais. O objetivo da tese foi desvendar o que há por trás do trabalho de interpretação de uma língua para outra, que fatores influenciam, positiva ou negativamente, a atuação do IE, considerando a sua autoria, o impacto do discurso de outrem , a polissemia das línguas em jogo e, especialmente, a criação ou transcriação. Esta pesquisa foi construída com embasamento, principalmente, nos pressupostos de Bakhtin (2009, 2010), pois acreditamos que a linguagem é uma atividade concreta e está atrelada à dimensão da vida, tendo caráter dialógico. Não conseguimos compreender a atuação do IE se não como atos únicos, que são possíveis num tempo e espaço determinados, com interlocutores reais que enunciam e esperam respostas. Tentando abarcar a totalidade dos acontecimentos em torno do fazer do IE (mas cientes da impossibilidade disso), optamos por realizar uma pesquisa de cunho qualitativo e com alguma influência da abordagem microetnográfica. A coleta de dados se deu no segundo semestre de 2011, e foram observados quatro IEs atuando em quatro salas diferentes, com aulas ministradas por três professores, nos anos finais do Ensino Fundamental, em uma escola com Programa Educacional Inclusivo e Bilíngue para surdos. Inseridos em salas de aula, e acompanhando as vivências nelas ocorridas, realizamos videogravações que nos permitiram registrar situações naturais e cotidianas do processo tradutório realizado pelos IEs. Do banco de dados construídos, selecionamos nove episódios para fins de análise e discussão, que foram divididos em três eixos temáticos, intitulados: a construção coletiva de conhecimentos em um contexto de ensino dialogado ; a visualidade como elemento constitutivo do processo enunciativo ; a narrativa amparada por representações imagéticas . As análises e reflexões sobre o fazer do IE nos levaram à construção da tese de que o fazer do Intérprete Educacional não se restringe à tradução e interpretação de enunciados, sua prática cotidiana vai além desse aspecto: o IE é coautor dos discursos proferidos pelo professor em sala de aula. Partimos do pressuposto que o contexto da sala de aula é tão complexo que os dizeres do professor seriam intraduzíveis (como apontaram alguns autores da área da tradução), não pela questão linguística ou pela forma de apresentação dos mesmos, mas pelos muitos elementos presentes nessa conjuntura. Por fim, elencamos alguns apontamentos que julgamos relevantes para a formação de IEs, visando contribuir para a atuação de futuros profissionais, a partir de novos olhares.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:46:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4950.pdf: 1203614 bytes, checksum: 1c2fe0c923baacf3719c45fc6274ffeb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-06<br>Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos<br>The challenge of the inclusion of people with disabilities in different segments of social relations is not new and it is undoubtedly a complex process. In formal education deaf students are also offered an interpretation service performed by a Translator/ Interpreter of Brazilian Sign Language, in this dissertation referred to as educational interpreter (EI). Thus, under the assumptions of enunciative-discursive perspective, the objective of this study is to identify (1) strategies adopted in the interpretation from Portuguese to Brazilian Sign Language in the context of a Lato sensu graduate course and (2) influences experienced by an interpreter in this activity. The methodology adopted was participant ethnographic research, since it enables forms of interaction between the researcher and the subjects that no other technique does. In this study Libras interpreters (the author and other professional researcher invited) participated, in addition, an adult deaf student, a professor and other hearing students took part. Data collection was conducted through video recording of the interpretation of the classes in the university s classroom. The classes analyzed (part of a specialization course on "Sustainability - in the context of construction / architecture) had as subject "Energy Efficiency." The activity of educational interpreting, especially in higher education is a difficult task since it involves not only technical knowledge, but also conceptual, social, academic and linguistic knowledge related to the course theme. At that point, we realized that active-dialogical understanding and interaction weave the IE s and the student s knowledge, who are active subjects in the productive chain of meaning, with the clear goal of promoting student's learning.<br>O desafio da inclusão de pessoas com deficiência nos diferentes segmentos das relações sociais não é algo novo, trata-se sem dúvida de um processo complexo. Na educação formal, o estudante surdo é também atendido em suas especificidades linguísticas por meio do serviço do Tradutor/Intérprete de Língua Brasileira de Sinais (TILS), nesta dissertação chamado de Intérprete Educacional (IE). Assim, sob os pressupostos da perspectiva enunciativo-discursiva, o objetivo deste estudo foi identificar estratégias adotadas na interpretação do português para a Libras no contexto da pós-graduação lato sensu e influências sofridas pelo intérprete em sua atividade de interpretação. A metodologia da pesquisa etnográfica participante, em que se baseia este trabalho, é uma modalidade que possibilita formas de interação entre o pesquisador e os sujeitos que abrem fontes de informação que nenhuma outra técnica permite. Portanto, os participantes deste estudo foram dois intérpretes de Libras (a autora pesquisadora e outro profissional convidado), que se revezavam na atividade de interpretação em sala de aula, um aluno surdo adulto, professores do referido curso e demais alunos ouvintes da sala de aula. A coleta de dados foi realizada por meio de vídeo gravação das interpretações das aulas, em sala de aula da universidade. As aulas analisadas tinham a temática &#8213;Eficiência Energética&#8214;, ministrada em um curso de especialização em Sustentabilidade no contexto da construção civil/arquitetura. A atividade do Intérprete Educacional, em especial no ensino superior e na pós-graduação, constitui uma difícil tarefa, a começar pelos conhecimentos técnicos, conceituais, sócio-acadêmicos, de mundo e relacionados à temática do curso a que se destina a interpretação, e também das exigências quanto a conhecimentos linguísticos. Nesse ponto chegamos à conclusão de que a compreensão ativo-dialógica e a interação, tramam o saber do IE e o saber do aluno, sujeitos ativos na cadeia produtiva dos sentidos, com o objetivo claro de favorecer a aprendizagem do aluno.

Робота присвячена дослідженню особливостей перекладу невербальних одиниць в англомовних художніх текстах. Розглянуті сучасні підходи до вивчення невербальних комунікативних одиниць, класифікації невербальних комунікативних засобів у сучасній англійській мові, функції невербальних комунікативних засобів у художньому тексті, а також проаналізована лексична репрезентація невербальних знаків у англомовних художніх текстах. Особлива увага приділена дослідженню стратегій та прийомів перекладу невербальних одиниць в англомовних художніх текстах і аналізу труднощів їх перекладу. Також розроблена система вправ для навчання студентів з перекладу невербальних одиниць в англомовних художніх текстах.<br>Работа посвящена исследованию особенностей перевода невербальных единиц в англоязычных художественных текстах. Рассмотрены современные подходы к изучению невербальных коммуникативных единиц, классификации невербальных коммуникативных средств в современном английском языке, функции невербальных коммуникативных средств в художественном тексте, а также проанализирована лексическая репрезентация невербальных знаков в англоязычных текстах. Особое внимание уделено исследованию стратегий и приемов перевода невербальных единиц в англоязычных художественных текстах и ​​анализу трудностей их перевода. Также разработана система упражнений для обучения студентов по переводу невербальных единиц в англоязычных художественных текстах.<br>The work is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the translation of nonverbal units in English-language literary texts. We considered modern approaches to the study of nonverbal communication units, classification of nonverbal communication tools in modern English, functions of nonverbal communication tools in literary texts, and lexical representation of nonverbal signs in English literary texts. Particular attention is paid to the study of strategies and techniques of translation of nonverbal units in English-language literary texts and analysis of the difficulties of their translation. A system of exercises has also been developed to teach students how to translate nonverbal units in English-language literary texts.

This study investigated the conceptual blending processes that occurred during American Sign Language (ASL) interpretations. Using the framework of conceptual blending (Fauconnier &Turner, 1996), this study analyzed six ASL interpretations and found two new mental spaces, Narrator Space and Interpreter Space, which are activated during interpretations. Conceptual blending has been used analyzing ASL (Liddell, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003; Dudis, 2004a, 2004b, 2007) but had not been applied to ASL interpretations until this study. The conceptual blending process of ASL has found several mental spaces that are activated in blends. Real Space (Liddell, 1995) and Event Space (Dudis, 2007) are two mental spaces that blend in ASL; these two spaces were also found in the data of this study. The data also revealed that all six interpreters created Event Space much like Deaf signers.<br>Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only<br>Department of English

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Technology: Language Practice, Department of Media, Language and Communication, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016.<br>IsiZulu is a previously marginalized language and is spoken by 78% of people in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa.info 2012). Signed language on the other hand, is not an official language in South Africa, although it is recognised despite the profession having undergone major transformation since democracy. This study hypothesizes that isiZulu and South African Sign Language interpreters both face challenges when given interpreting assignments. This study aims to create an awareness of the needs of the isiZulu speakers and deaf people when seeking judicial assistance and also to contribute towards the provision of quality interpreting services in some of the courts in KwaZulu-Natal. With this study it is hoped to assist the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to be able to see where they can still improve on their system. This study was conducted only in four courts, therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to be the same in all the courts in South Africa. IsiZulu kusewulimi obelucindezelwe, kanti lusetshenziswa abantu abangamaphesenti angama-78 KwaZulu-Natali (SouthAfrica.info 2012). Ulimi lwezandla ngakolunye uhlangothi, akulona ulimi olusemthethweni eNingizimu Afrika nangale koshintsho oluningi olwenziwe kusukela kwaqala intando yabantu. Lolu cwaningo lucabangela ukuthi otolika besiZulu kanye naboLimi Lwezandla babhekana nezingqinamba uma benikwe umsebenzi wokutolika. Lolu cwaningo Iuhlose ukwazisa ngezidingo zabantu abakhuluma isiZulu kanye nabangezwa uma bedinga usizo lwezomthetho kanye nokuxhasa ekunikezeleni ukutolika okusezingeni elifanele kwezinye zezinkantolo KwaZulu-Natali. Ngalolu cwaningo kuthenjwa ukuthi luzosiza uMnyango Wobulungiswa kanye nokuThuthukiswa koMthethosisekelo ukuba ubone ukuthi yikuphi la okungalungiswa khona inqubo yokwenza yawo. Lolu cwaningo lwenziwe ezinkantolo ezine kuphela, ngakho-ke okutholakele ngeke kuze kuthathwe ngokuthi kuyafana ezinkantolo zonke zaseNingizimu Afrika.<br>M

This study investigates factors hampering comprehension of sign language interpretations rendered on South African TV news bulletins in terms of Deaf viewers’ expectancy norms and corpus analysis of authentic interpretations. The research fills a gap in the emerging discipline of Sign Language Interpreting Studies, specifically with reference to corpus studies. The study presents a new model for translation/interpretation evaluation based on the introduction of Grounded Theory (GT) into a reception-oriented model. The research question is addressed holistically in terms of target audience competencies and expectations, aspects of the physical setting, interpreters’ use of language and interpreting choices. The South African Deaf community are incorporated as experts into the assessment process, thereby empirically grounding the research within the socio-dynamic context of the target audience. Triangulation in data collection and analysis was provided by applying multiple mixed data collection methods, namely questionnaires, interviews, eye-tracking and corpus tools. The primary variables identified by the study are the small picture size and use of dialect. Secondary variables identified include inconsistent or inadequate use of non-manual features, incoherent or non-simultaneous mouthing, careless or incorrect sign execution, too fast signing, loss of visibility against skin or clothing, omission of vital elements of sentence structure, adherence to source language structures, meaningless additions, incorrect referencing, oversimplification and violations of Deaf norms of restructuring, information transfer, gatekeeping and third person interpreting. The identification of these factors allows the construction of a series of testable hypotheses, thereby providing a broad platform for further research. Apart from pioneering corpus-driven sign language interpreting research, the study makes significant contributions to present knowledge of evaluative models, interpreting strategies and norms and systems of transcription and annotation.<br>Linguistics<br>Thesis (D. Litt.et Phil. (Linguistics)

碩士<br>國立臺北科技大學<br>電子工程系<br>106<br>Deaf-mute people use sign language as a communication method which is different from our oral communication. As a result, the deaf-mute people often face barriers to communicate with others, so creating a sign language translation system that can accurately transform sign language into voice message become very important. This paper proposed a wearable sign language translation glove that can translate sign language to voice instantly. A nine-axis sensor, which includes an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer, is embedded in the glove for hand gesture detection. Furthermore, the accelerometer is used to calculate roll angle and pitch angle of the Euler angle in the space and these two parameters are defined as the palm-facing feature. The raw data accessed from accelerometer is used to define the moving feature. The finger angle which is calculated from magnetometer is defined as the finger bending feature. The palm-facing and the finger bending data are defined as input signal. To make sure the gesture is valid, the input signal will be acquired periodically. As long as the collected gesture exceeds a steady judgment time, it will be recognized as a valid gesture and send to mobile app via Bluetooth low energy. A sign language database is built in the mobile app, including static, dynamic and compound sign language. Once the sign language is recognized successfully, it will be displayed on the mobile phone screen and play the voice message.

Signed language interpreting in South Africa has not received much academic attention, despite the profession having undergone major transformation since the advent of democracy. This study aims to create a better understanding of signed language interpreters’ behaviour in one specific setting in South Africa – post-secondary education. During the researcher’s own practice as an educational interpreter at a post-secondary institution, she experienced role conflict and found little information available to assist her in making professional decisions on which direction to take. This provided the impetus to embark on this research. The study begins by outlining the field of liaison interpreting and educational interpreting, and examining the existing literature regarding the interpreter’s role and norms in interpreting. It then goes on to examine authentic interpreted texts, filmed in actual lectures in post-secondary settings. These texts are analysed with reference to interpreter shifts and deviations from the source text, with particular focus on interpreter-generated utterances (additions), borrowing (fingerspelling), omissions (both errors and conscious choice) and various types of collaboration between the interpreter and primary participants. These shifts are examined in more detail to explore whether they indicate any change in the interpreter’s role. Further, interpreters’ own views about their practice, elicited from individual interviews, enable the reader to understand how the interpreters view the role(s) that they fulfil. The research will provide information for interpreter trainers about the roles assumed by SASL interpreters in higher education and provide a platform from which to scaffold future educational interpreter research and training.<br>Linguistics<br>M.A. (Linguistics)

碩士<br>國立成功大學<br>資訊工程學系碩博士班<br>91<br>The hearing-impaired people generally use sign language to express their intention. Sign language can be learned from teachers, books or videotapes. Presently, the use of either photographs or drawings overlaid with textual descriptions to represent sign language makes the reader harder to understand the process of signing. Videotapes better represent the signing process, but they have difficulty for flexible access and are limited in a small coverage of sign words. Besides, there exist many language differences between Chinese and Taiwanese sign language (TSL). The able-bodied people present sign language by way of the use of Chinese grammar. This situation frequently occurs and makes it hard to communicate with the hearing impaired. In this thesis, we propose a Chinese to TSL translation and sign image synthesis system for TSL learning. More specially, we focuses on 1) proposing a set of syntactic clusters and a two-stage processing strategy to parse the Chinese and TSL parallel sentence into the sentence translation pattern and the phrase alignment pattern, 2) developing a novel statistical translation model to estimate the optimal TSL sentence and deal with the out-of-pattern issue, 3) developing a sign image database based on the balanced characteristics of sign motion features, 4) proposing an image synthesis mechanism to concatenate video clips by simultaneously considering the distance of palm positions and movement directions, and 5) integrating the above approaches into an image-based sign language learning system. In order to evaluate our proposed approaches, 2159 sign words and 4554 parallel sentences, in which the mean length of sentence is 4.5 words, were collected. Of this database, 90% was used as the training corpus and the remainder for testing. 1518 sentence patterns and 867 phrase patterns were obtained. The trained balanced corpus consists of 409 sentences and 1776 sign words. The translation performance achieved 92.3% accuracy for top-5 candidates. In subjective and objective evaluation of image synthesis, our proposed approach achieved better performance. In case study, the reading comprehension performance of our proposed system also achieved 82% satisfactory degree. Consequently, our proposed system can provide the deaf and the able-bodied to learn TSL and be used as an alternative method for the exam in deaf schools.

碩士<br>國立成功大學<br>資訊工程學系碩博士班<br>90<br>People with hearing/speech impairments usually have communication problems in daily activities, education and vocation leading to incapable of getting into the mainstream of society. These dysfunctions often affect and limit the language learning and expression seriously. Presently, there are few of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) technology and devices as well as the associated education-training system available in Taiwan. Besides, Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) and written Chinese have several structural differences in linguistics. Deaf students usually make ill-formed sentences from the viewpoint of written Chinese. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an innovative TSL AAC system to provide communication aids in daily activities and language learning. More specifically, the study focuses on: 1) developing an effective TSL virtual keyboard for more intuitional selection input, 2) developing an error tolerant sign cue retrieval mechanism for word prediction and 3) integrating the predictive sentence template language model (PST) with path branching between equivalence classes for robust sentence generation. In order to evaluate the performance of our approach, 1881 frequently used signs and 2000 Chinese sentences, in which the mean length of utterance is 6.24 words, were selected as the training and testing database. The trained PST language model includes 461 sentence templates. The retrieval enhancement using word prediction, hand-shape deletion and movement deletion achieved 99.73%, 77.9% and 97.07%, respectively. For the assessment of practical communication aid, 8 profoundly deaf students were asked to conduct the experiments. After training, adaptation and evaluation phases, the accuracy of sentence generation achieved 80%. This proposed system aims to improve speech communication ability and activities of daily life for communication-impaired people.

碩士<br>國立成功大學<br>工程科學系<br>104<br>Sign language is used by hearing-impaired people to communicate with; through the hand sign gestures and body motions to convey the information to other disabled people. But normal people usually do not learn the sign language, thus are unable to understand what the disabled people say. With the advance of information technology, especially the image recognition and processing technology, mobile communication hardware and software, together should be able to build a sign language translation system that enable normal people to communicate with disabled people using sign language. The main purpose of this study is to design and implement a mobile-device-based translation system that, using a mobile device, such as a smart phone, takes video of sign language form disabled people, translates them into texts for normal people, and shows texts typed by normal people to disabled ones, repeating this process to finish the communication. The system is targeted for daily life usages, such as that in a hospital or a bank. The techniques involve capturing sign language images from a mobile device, then making use of a sequence of image processing to detect hand regions, and recognizing the information of hand gestures, in three parts. The first part is to get the information of hand shapes, by using Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) and Binary Robust Independent Elementary Features (BRIEF) algorithms to detect interested points and generate characteristic values. Through calculating Hamming distance and comparing it to the image base to find the most similar hand shape. The second part is to figure out the directions of both hands’ movements by calculating the angles between two successively captures of the hands’ image center points. The third part is to get both hand positions by comparing their center points with a threshold point to decide if a hand is in the low or high position. The recognition precision of the sign language translation system, from experiments, can reach 91.1% and the average time for recognizing a hand shape is 90.59ms.

碩士<br>國立成功大學<br>資訊工程學系碩博士班<br>92<br>The hearing-impaired people generally use sign language to express their intention. However, hearing people don’t know how to use sign language and, therefore, the communication obstacle between them are formed. Presently, machine translation researches mainly focus on word-to-word translation, and some syntactic rule-based translation. On the other hand, the lack of parallel corpus of sign language limits the development of machine translation. For this reason, TSL translation system applied present machine translation technique will have no good performance. In this study, we propose a statistical approach using syntactic information for the translation from Chinese to Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL). 　　More specially, we focuses on 1) establishing a integrated corpus which consist of word, part of speech, semantic role, and semantic feature by combining information of several Chinese corpora, 2) collecting the context free grammar and training its probability by EM algorithm for proposal translation mechanism, 3) proposing a Chinese to Taiwanese Sign Language translation mechanism based on sentence structure and using syntactic information by complete statistical parsing model, and 4) integrating the above approaches into a Chinese to TSL translation system. 　　In order to evaluate our proposed approaches, 2,036 parallel sentences, in which the mean length of sentence is 5.6 words, were collected. Of this database, 80% was used as the training corpus and the remainder for testing, and 7,931 transfer rules were obtained. The translation performance achieved 81.6% and 91.5% accuracy for top-1 and top-5 candidates respectively, and got 0.087 Alignment Error Rate (AER). All of the above TSL translation　evaluations, our proposed approach achieved higher performance than IBM Model 3. In Mean Opinion Score evaluation, the average translation performance of our proposed system also achieved 81% satisfactory degree. Consequently, our proposed system can provide a channel of communication between the deaf and the able-bodied, and applied to TSL education in future.

碩士<br>南台科技大學<br>電機工程系<br>97<br>Hand gesture is one of the most common ways used in sign language for nonverbal communication. It is usually used by people who have hearing or speech impairments to communicate among themselves or with regular people. Different sign language systems have been successfully developed by researchers through out the world but most of it requires the use of data gloves or color markers to make the recognition easier. In this paper we introduce a Sign Language for Numbers Recognition to Speech Translation System prototype that is able to recognize number sign language in real time to help the hearing or speech impaired people communicate more effectively with the normal people. The system consists of four modules: Image acquisition, Image processing, Image analysis and Text-to-Speech. Image acquisition makes use of the NIIMAQ device NI PCI-1411 camera to capture the background snapshot and video of sign language performed by the end user. For the image processing module, first, motion detection will be done by background subtraction and moving region tracker to detect the elements in the video where motion is undergoing. Subsequent to that, skin detection will be used to identify areas in the video where skin pixel is present. Next, for the right hand detection we compare the x-coordinate of the three largest particles from the previous step, the particle with the largest x-coordinate will be considered as the right hand. After acquiring the right hand image furthermore image processing is performed such as thresholding, extraction and edge detection to prepare the image for the analysis. In the image analysis module, geometry of position will be utilized to compute for values such as distance, slope and angle which are necessary for the recognition of sign language for numbers. To complete the whole system, Text-to-Speech software will be adopted to generate an audio speech output. Experimental results have shown that the system has achieved satisfactory result of 98.3% for the sign language to speech translation.