[專業涵養] 手語主播/eSIGN project

Schee 提到了「虛擬手語主播」，所以我剛剛花了一點時間，讀了一下文中提到的簡報檔……

Schee reported the eSIGN project from Institute of German Sign Language and Communication of The Deaf, University of Hamburg. After reading this presentation file of eSIGN, I have some thought......

[skip Chinese and read English part directly]

在這份投影片中，提到幾個很關鍵的想法。他們認為：

  1. 使用手語當作主要溝通方法的人，在歐洲至少佔了千分之一
  2. 手語沒有書寫文字
  3. 聾人族群普遍不習於書寫文字
  4. 要在網路上傳遞影像，會佔掉大量頻寬

所以他們纔會提出這個作法，在網路上祇傳輸純文字，然後讓用戶端再把純文字解讀成手語動畫。於是不需要額外的教育/頻寬成本，就能把更多資訊散播給聾人族群。

這個作法也許在國外有其文化背景，但是在國內的情況顯然不同，而無法直接套用相同的策略。

在國內，手語並不統一；自然手語、文法手語、社會手語各有不同。國內沒有專人研究自然手語，而教育部制訂的文法手語其實跟書寫文字很像（因此學習成本不會比較低廉），再加上國內的電腦使用其實沒有妳我所想像的那般普及。

因此我覺得在國內，與其發展這類的媒體呈現，不如要求網頁內容提供者花更多的心思來清楚呈現資訊的內容。

In this presentation, the author assumed some idea:

  1. 0.1% of European population use sign language as primary communication
  2. No written form of sign language available
  3. Written language competence of many Deaf people poor
  4. Digital video may cause bandwidth problems

Therefore they want to build a Virtual Signing client which can transform plain text into signing video. Then they can easily distribute informations to Deaf people without additional education/bandwidth cost.

According to different culture background, we can't just apply this tactic in Taiwan.

In Taiwan, there are Natural Sign Language, Grammatical Sign Language and Social Sign Language. All these sign language are not the same. Otherwise, there is no scholar study in Natural Sign Language. Grammatical Sign Language established by Ministry of Education is more similar with written Chinese, so it will cost the same to educate as written Chinese. There is also another problem that computer usage in Taiwan is not so popular.

So it is more important to offer more clear content, in my humble opinion.

jedi.org: