Sign Language Research Articles

Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) Alphabet Detection System Using YOLO (You Only Look Once) Algorithm

This research aims to develop an Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) alphabet detection system using the YOLOv5 algorithm, an efficient and fast deep learning-based object detection model. The dataset used consists of BISINDO alphabet images enriched through data augmentation techniques such as rotation, flipping, and brightness adjustment. The evaluation results show that the YOLOv5s model achieved very good performance, with an average precision of 85.2%, recall of 89.3%, F1-score of 87.2%, and mean average precision (mAP) of 87.1%. The confusion matrix also indicates the model's ability to differentiate each BISINDO alphabet with high accuracy. The training data testing showed the model successfully achieved consistent decreases in all loss components, such as a decrease in train box loss from 0.06 to 0.015, and validation loss converging towards 0.002 for object loss and class loss. The real time testing also shows that the YOLOv5-based BISINDO alphabet detection system can perform well and consistently, indicating the practical application potential of this system to facilitate communication between people with hearing/speech disabilities and the general public. Overall, this research has resulted in an accurate and realtime implementable BISINDO alphabet recognition system.

A Study of UNIMEN Students' Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Thailand

This study explores the perspectives of Universitas Muhammadiyah Enrekang (UNIMEN) students on cross-cultural adaptation during their international internship in Thailand. Community service programs, which are mandatory for Indonesian tertiary students, offer practical experiences that bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world application. This research focuses on the challenges and adaptation strategies employed by students participating in teaching practices at private Thai schools. Using a qualitative methodology and thematic analysis, data were collected through interviews with eight fifth-semester students majoring in English Language Education. The findings identify eight key challenges: administrative issues, health problems, psychological stress, social integration difficulties, teaching challenges, culture shock, language barriers, and inadequate facilities. Cultural barriers, such as differences in the education system and social norms, led to experiences of homesickness and stress. Language difficulties were particularly pronounced due to limited Thai and English proficiency among locals. To address these challenges, students adopted several strategies, including seeking social support, engaging in cultural learning, using sign language, and fostering communication with locals. These strategies helped alleviate culture shock, improve cross-cultural understanding, and enhance teaching effectiveness. The study underscores the importance of adequate preparation, including cultural learning modules, and provides valuable insights for universities to better support future participants in international community service programs.

Bilingual education practices in Brazil: a literature review

This article presents a literature review aimed at analyzing pedagogical practices in bilingual education in Brazil, focusing on publications available in the CAPES journals portal and the CAPES theses and dissertations catalog. The research was conducted using the keywords "educação bilíngue," "ensino bilíngue," and "práticas pedagógicas," with exclusion criteria including "educação para surdos," "língua de sinais," and "surdos." The review revealed a significant gap in research regarding bilingual education practices in prestigious languages, with most studies focused on the bilingual education of deaf people and Sign Language. Despite an extensive search, works directly addressing bilingual education of prestigious languages in Brazil remain scarce. This gap underscores the need for more specific research in this area, as the field has been growing in recent years. Interestingly, all identified publications were published since 2020, suggesting an emerging body of work that, if continued, may contribute to the expansion of the field. The findings highlight an opportunity for future research to fill this gap by providing empirical evidence, theoretical frameworks, and practical recommendations for bilingual education in prestigious languages. By addressing this research gap, future studies can inform policy development, curriculum design, and instructional practices, ultimately improving educational opportunities and outcomes for bilingual students and educators in Brazil.

Continuous sign language recognition enhanced by dynamic attention and maximum backtracking probability decoding

Continuous sign language recognition enhanced by dynamic attention and maximum backtracking probability decoding

A REVIEW OF CONCEPTUAL METONYMY - METHODS, THEORY AND DESCRIPTION

This paper systematically reviews the main content and academic contributions of Conceptual Metonymy - Methods, Theory and Description. As Volume 60 of the "Human Cognitive Processing" series, this book collects research findings on metonymy from the 12th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. Through detailed analysis, this paper highlights the book's significant value in several aspects: First, the metonymy corpus and its 14-field description system established by Barcelona's team laid the methodological foundation for metonymy typology research; Second, the book's in-depth discussion of metonymy properties reveals characteristics such as the contingency and indexicality of metonymic reasoning, as well as the dual role of metonymic source in conceptual integration; Third, through multilingual empirical research, it demonstrates the universality of metonymy in constructional development, emotion construction, lexical morphological changes, and sign language construction, while highlighting metonymy's emotional, evaluative and social functions. This book not only advances the theoretical depth of metonymy research but also points out directions for future research, such as metonymy inhibiting factors and cross-linguistic metonymic features that still require further exploration. KEYWORDS: conceptual metonymy; metonymy corpus; metonymy properties; metonymic reasoning; pragmatic rhetorical functions; cognitive linguistics

THE ASL

Teaching English to Brazilian deaf students faces specific challenges, as English is their third language, followed by Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) as L2/L1, respectively. Traditional English classes emphasize oral production and comprehension; thus, personalized guidance that addresses the specific linguistic needs of deaf students is lacking in national educational documents. This study highlights the importance of New Literacy Studies, advocated by Street (1984, 2000) and Barton et al. (2000), which emphasize literacy practices in diverse social and cultural contexts, crucial to meeting the linguistic and communicative needs of minority groups. Incorporating sign language could increase deaf students’ motivation to acquire English as L3 through visual learning, language transfer, cultural connection, multimodal learning, and student engagement. Wauters and Knoors (2008) found that integrating sign language into English language instruction improved the comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and overall language skills of deaf students. Our research explores whether American Sign Language (ASL) could be a motivational resource for these students. The study involved observing six lessons in two classes of a regular inclusive school with deaf students, collecting questionnaire responses, and analyzing discourse sequences provided in interviews. Following an intervention in the language laboratory of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), where English classes were taught in Libras, interviews revealed that the combination of Libras, ASL, and English significantly increased students’ interest and motivation to learn English.

A sign language journey to the land of smiles: Thailand study abroad.

This qualitative study focused on the synergistic experience of a group of Deaf1 and hearing participants during a 2-week international study-abroad program to investigate the impact of immersing hearing American Sign Language (ASL) undergraduate majors with culturally Deaf faculty and doctoral students. 20 participants included undergraduate students who were ASL majors, Deaf doctoral students, faculty members, and an interpreter. Data included narratives with the Deaf faculty leader and the hearing ASL interpreter, a content analysis with the hearing undergraduates, and a section focused on the Deaf perspective with a thematic analysis with the Deaf faculty, students, and alumni. 6 themes emerged in the discussion of students' experiences during the tour in Thailand, including being immersed into the Deaf world, the challenge of not comprehending what was happening, the patience of the Thai people, experiencing cultural differences, receptive skills improving, comprehension increasing, and issues related to scheduling of events. The impact of both international and multicultural influences are discussed. Additionally, recommendations for travel agencies that work with Deaf study-abroad leaders are included.

Practices of Curriculum Differentiation in Community Schools of Nepal

The curriculum differentiation practice implies a separate type of design used to secure social justice and inclusion in the school. It has different dimensions i.e. content, methods and strategies, environment, output, and teacher. Nepalese community schools have some practice of integrated curriculum approach except the well-defined practice of differentiated curriculum. This study explores the status of the usage of differentiated practices of the curriculum in the deaf and community secondary schools along with the challenges and the coping strategies. Qualitative design and case study approach entail in this study in which the deaf and community secondary schools are selected purposively and similar numbers of teachers. The respondents along with the observation checklist are the information generation tools. Thematic analysis and the theoretical backup support to justify the information and its validation. There are no well-defined and mentioned differentiated curriculum practices in community schools except the integrated approach. Lacking a defined practice and the proper training for the teachers are some challenges of its practices and to cope with the challenges the well-defined design of curriculum differentiation should be stated by the authorized body along with the proper training for the sign language teachers and the normal language teachers. If there would be adding technology to the defined practice of differentiation, it would be easier to ensure social justice, inclusion, and 21st-century skills in the learners.

Instari, Tuutti, Kääntis

The 20th century saw the birth of translator training in different parts of the world. In Finland, the first translator and interpreter training institutions, the so-called Language Institutes, were established in 1966. Today, many institutions offer interpreter and translator training in Finland, including sign language interpreting, among other subjects. Four translator training programmes have their roots in the Language Institutes: those in Tampere University and in the universities of Eastern Finland, Helsinki and Turku. The idea to write the history of these programmes was born amidst celebrations of their 50th anniversaries, falling within a 5-year span between 2016 and 2021. The present thematic issue is the outcome of the history work started during those years, and with contributions presenting different aspects of translator training in Finland: the establishment of the first translator training institutes; the early theoretical thinking behind the translation pedagogy of one of the first trainers, Atso Vuoristo; a systematic review of Finnish doctoral dissertations in Translation Studies; and students' and teachers' reflections and memories of their time working and studying in these institutions. Acknowledging the fact that there is much more ground to cover, we conclude this article by suggesting future avenues for research on thistopic.

AUDIO TO SIGN LANGUAGE CONVERSION

Due to high demand for inclusive technologies and the rapid electrons communication age, there is growing interest in automatic audio to sign language conversion systems. This article has given the relevant way to solve this problem by converting spoken language into sign languages in real time using machine translation that can shape communication path for deaf and dumb community. In our method, we use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to transcribe audio into text and then deep learning for sign language generation. The system recognizes keywords and important phrases in the transcribed text, associates them with corresponding sign language gestures, and presents such signs animations using an avatar-based visualization. The recent accomplishment is different from previous systems that work directly and only translate a sentence to its corresponding sign, rather focusing on the contextual analysis for better conveying of meaning. Key Words: Audio to Sign Language Translation, Speech- to- Text Conversion, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Translation, Deep Learning, Gesture Recognition, Avatar-based Sign Language Visualization, Accessibility, Multilingual Sign Language

SIGN LANGUAGE TO TEXT CONVERTOR

Sign language is a vital form of communication for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, yet there remains a significant barrier in real time interaction with non-sign language users. This project proposes the development of a Sign Language to Text Converter, an innovative system designed to translate sign language gestures into written text. The goal of the system is to produce an accessible real-time tool that transcends the communication gap between the Deaf people and those who are not familiar with sign language, thus enhancing interaction in diverse spheres such as education, healthcare, and social settings. This system will utilize techniques such as computer vision and machine learning in recognizing and interpreting hand gestures. The system processes real-time video input using OpenCV for image processing and MediaPipe for hand and pose detection, extracting key features such as hand positions, movements, and orientations. These features are then fed into a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained to classify individual sign language gestures. The output is translated to text, which can either be displayed on a screen or used with the text-to-speech systems to provide an auditory output. Key Words: MediaPipe, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Text To Speech(TTS), American Sign Language (ASL)

Wearable Electronic Glove and Multilayer Para-LSTM-CNN-Based Method for Sign Language Recognition

Wearable Electronic Glove and Multilayer Para-LSTM-CNN-Based Method for Sign Language Recognition

Neural machine translation techniques for English text to Pakistan sign language gloss translation

Neural machine translation techniques for English text to Pakistan sign language gloss translation

Where Can I Sign My Language?: A Systematic Literature Review (2000–2019) of Young People's Access to Sign Language Socialisation Spaces in the Nordic Countries

This article presents the results from a systematic literature review of Nordic research studies from 2000 to 2019, addressing the question of children and adolescents' access to spaces where they can sign with peers and adults. The study is based on a dialogistic approach to language, and holds that languaging is inextricably tied to places and situations—that is, spaces and contexts in which people participate in interactions with others. Thus, acquiring sign language is not only about the child or adolescent's individual learning of sign language in an educational setting, but also about participation in sign language activities. The review addresses the paradoxical situation in the field of sign language education whereby formal recognition of sign language and the institutionalisation of rights to sign language education gained momentum at around the same time as the number of deaf schools began to decline. The results from the review indicate that very few studies of sign language pay attention to spaces where children and adolescents can interact with other people through sign language. It appears that current legislation, as well as research, emphasises the individual right to learn sign language for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, and has overlooked the significance of facilitating and protecting sign language-based socialisation spaces as significant sites for sign language learning, participation and acquisition.

The Pictogram Icon as a Learning Media for Deaf Students in Visual Communication Design

In 2022, the total number of deaf or deaf students studying at Sahid University Surakarta will be 14 students. The government itself has mandated the right to education for children with special needs as regulated in Article 54 of Law Number 39 of 1999 concerning Human Rights, namely: Every child who is physically and/or mentally disabled has the right to receive special care, education, training and assistance at cost. state, to guarantee life in accordance with human dignity, self-improvement, and ability to participate in the life of society and the state. The obstacle so far has been communication in delivering material from lecturers to deaf students. This is because: 1) 90% of deaf students in Visual Communication Design cannot read written sentences that are too long. Deaf students of Visual Communications Design are accustomed to using hand sign language, namely a visual language that emphasizes the ease of moving hands, not the order of sentences based on SPOK, 2) The digital application used by deaf students to translate the lecturer's voice does not function properly. This is because sentences/words often appear that do not match what the lecturer in the course said. The aim of designing pictogram icons as a learning medium for Visual Communication Design students is that deaf students can understand and understand information about lectures and can carry them out well, so that deaf students are formed who are able to compete in society. To achieve this goal, the Innovation Development method is carried out using the Lee & Owens Model method which produces pictogram icons which can help simplify verbal and written language into visual language.

Managing the shortage: A quantitative-qualitative study on the scale and effects of the severe lack in sign language interpreting resource in the German market

Managing the shortage: A quantitative-qualitative study on the scale and effects of the severe lack in sign language interpreting resource in the German market

Knowledge of contraceptive methods among deaf women: a qualitative study

Objective To analyse the understanding of deaf women regarding contraceptive methods. Method We conducted a qualitative descriptive study in two referral centres for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in São Paulo, Brazil, trough years 2020–2022. Twenty-eight deaf women who use Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) were interviewed face-to-face and remotely via videocall using a semi-structured questionnaire containing sociodemographic and clinical data and questions about understanding and knowledge of contraceptive methods. We performed a content analysis through transcription, interpretation, and validation of the LIBRAS translation with the assistance of NVivo software. Results Communication barrier (28/28) was the primary factor associated with low knowledge about contraceptive methods. Regarding barrier methods, 20 (71%) participants reported be familiar with condoms, 13 (46%) with diaphragms, 20 (71%) about oral contraceptives, and 17 (60%) about injectable methods. Concerning long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), 16 (57%) were aware about intrauterine devices and 7 (25%) with subdermal implants. Fifteen (53%) of participants were aware about female and male permanent contraception. Unplanned pregnancy rate was 59% and use of fertility awareness methods was reported by 6 (21%), barrier methods 5 (17%), short-acting methods 6 (21%), LARC 2 (7%) and permanent contraception among 4 (14%). Conclusion In our sample of deaf women, condoms and oral contraceptives were identified more often and were more in use. All interviewed deaf women cited communication as a barrier to accessing information about contraceptive methods, highlighting the low knowledge and use of LARC.

A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of language ideologies in parliamentary debates about the recognition of Irish sign language

ABSTRACT Irish Sign Language (ISL) became an officially recognised language in Ireland by means of the ISL Act 2017, which commenced in December 2020 after more than 30 years of campaigning by the Deaf community. While some work has investigated language ideologies behind the ISL recognition campaign, this study explores language ideologies in parliamentary discourse, specifically perspectives of languageness of ISL. This is crucial to the study of sign language recognition and policymaking, as previous research has identified a link between differing views on sign languages and deafness and policy outcomes. A corpus of parliamentary debates on ISL recognition (2013-2020) was compiled and analysed. A sociocognitive approach was adopted, alongside a framework for analysing how discourses establish legitimacy for social practices. Theoretically, categories of sign language ideologies were applied. A link between language, culture and identity is established by the legislators through their use of terms such as 'indigenous' and 'native' to describe ISL and the Deaf community. ISL is compared to Irish to further their argument and claims are made about the capability of ISL as a legitimate language. Finally, benefits of ISL to wider society are highlighted.

Design of a neural transformer for Spanish to Mexican Sign Language automatic translation/interpretation

ABSTRACT This paper uses a multi-head neural transformer to present the text-to-text translation/interpretation of Sign Language (SL) in the context of glosses (written SL). A Spanish to Mexican Sign Language (MSL) gloss dataset was built based on simple and compound sentences and the corresponding interpretation in MSL gloss. The interpretation process was achieved by implementing state-of-the-art tools in the natural language processing (NLP) field called neural transformers. We tried different architectures, varying the number of encoder-decoder layers and hyperparameters. The best of our models achieved 0.68 BLEU in the training phase and 0.33 in the validation phase. MSL glosses are crucial as they rule the grammatical order in which MSL has to be executed. All these quantitative and qualitative results confirm the potential applicability of neural transformers to create effective automatic translators for the Spanish language to MSL, with similar effectiveness shown by other automatic translators for other more likely languages.

Assessing deaf parents in safeguarding and child protection processes: Deaf experts’ experience of routine social work practice

This study concerns Deaf parents whose primary language is British Sign Language (BSL) and who are assessed as part of safeguarding and child protection processes. Seven Deaf-specialist professionals were interviewed in BSL about their experiences of usual practice with Child and Family Social workers who have little or no experience of child protection investigation and safeguarding assessments involving Deaf BSL users. The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) informed data generation and the approach to analysis in BSL. Findings focus on: (i) getting early interactions right between mainstream social workers and Deaf parents (ii) the practice of relying on written English (iii) problems of cultural adaption between languages (iv) cultural norms in asking questions and (v) challenges arising from a poverty of background information. Recommendations are offered for improving cultural-linguistic practice when working with Deaf parents within safeguarding/child protection.