“You aren’t going to change English in the same way you aren’t going to change QWERTY layouts.”
I think you (for some value of “you”) could do that in an otherwise-stable world, over a long enough timescale, but other technological changes will obviate the need for it to soon to do so. Things like natural language processing, automated translation, brain-computer interfaces, cochlear implants and other interventions making deafness rarer.
Although now I’m wondering if any sign languages have their own dedicated written forms, and if so, what they’re like. Also, whether anyone has created video-to-text software for sign languages, even if that needs to include a machine translation step to convert to a spoken language’s written form.
There are various notations for recording the gestures of sign languages (Hamnosys, Stokoe, SignWriting, and others), but none of them are routinely used by deaf people to write in. Such systems have generally been developed by and for people, deaf or otherwise, engaged in the study of sign languages.
Work has been done on recognising signing from video, but it is a very difficult problem and little has been achieved. Translating signing notation to an animated avatar is easier (I’ve been involved with such a project myself), and various demonstration systems have been made, but nothing beyond that.
-
“You aren’t going to change English in the same way you aren’t going to change QWERTY layouts.”
I think you (for some value of “you”) could do that in an otherwise-stable world, over a long enough timescale, but other technological changes will obviate the need for it to soon to do so. Things like natural language processing, automated translation, brain-computer interfaces, cochlear implants and other interventions making deafness rarer.
Although now I’m wondering if any sign languages have their own dedicated written forms, and if so, what they’re like. Also, whether anyone has created video-to-text software for sign languages, even if that needs to include a machine translation step to convert to a spoken language’s written form.
There are various notations for recording the gestures of sign languages (Hamnosys, Stokoe, SignWriting, and others), but none of them are routinely used by deaf people to write in. Such systems have generally been developed by and for people, deaf or otherwise, engaged in the study of sign languages.
Work has been done on recognising signing from video, but it is a very difficult problem and little has been achieved. Translating signing notation to an animated avatar is easier (I’ve been involved with such a project myself), and various demonstration systems have been made, but nothing beyond that.
-