Sign Language Translation by Computer

For anyone who derrises the usefulness of universities in real word application, you don’t need to look too far to find examples of innovation, an example of which is last week’s Imagine Cup. The Imagine Cup is a software development contest sponsored by Microsoft; four students from Thailand who entered their speech to sign language translation software have won the main category of the competition.

Of course, with the competition being sponsored by Microsoft all entrants were required to use Microsoft software development platforms on which to design their end product. Their software also had to further one or more of the United Nation’s millennium goals. The Thai team’s software is Eyefeel, which combines speech recognition, face recognition and sign language animation in order to provide real time translation for those who have hearing problems.

Team captain Pichai Sodsai describes the team’s software, "The voice recognition module captures the speech and converts the sentence so it fits the grammar of sign language”, “The sign language is then animated on the screen, while face recognition is used to distinguish different speakers."

The software is not without a few teething troubles, however, notably the lag in the translation owing to the innate tendency of sign language to struggle in keeping up with real time speech. Given time these problems will be overcome, "It is a huge challenge to deal with," said Sodsai. "We deal with most of the problem by letting the software automatically shorten the sentence."

But what about the commercial considerations of the results of the competition? Jon Perera, General Manager of the Microsoft Education Group says "In terms of real world applicability, some of the software [has the potential to] land in the real world market and will have the impact the students want it to have. And, certainly, we see a lot of software that won't necessarily become a commercial or a long term viable solution in the market."

The competition also revealed other ideas "Some solutions are already being used by governments. The team from Jordan for example built a 'desertification tracking system,' which is a self-powered embedded chipset board that tracks the growth of the desert over time," Perera said. "The government of Jordan is partnering with them and is sponsoring the team to have several sites tracked."