@inproceedings{zhang-etal-2025-improving,
title = "Improving Multilingual Sign Language Translation with Automatically Clustered Language Family Information",
author = "Zhang, Ruiquan and
Hu, Cong and
Yu, Pei and
Chen, Yidong",
editor = "Rambow, Owen and
Wanner, Leo and
Apidianaki, Marianna and
Al-Khalifa, Hend and
Eugenio, Barbara Di and
Schockaert, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = jan,
year = "2025",
address = "Abu Dhabi, UAE",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.241/",
pages = "3579--3588",
abstract = "Sign Language Translation (SLT) bridges the communication gap between deaf and hearing individuals by converting sign language videos into spoken language texts. While most SLT research has focused on bilingual translation models, the recent surge in interest has led to the exploration of Multilingual Sign Language Translation (MSLT). However, MSLT presents unique challenges due to the diversity of sign languages across nations. This diversity can lead to cross-linguistic conflicts and hinder translation accuracy. To use the similarity of actions and semantics between sign languages to alleviate conflict, we propose a novel approach that leverages sign language families to improve MSLT performance. Sign languages were clustered into families automatically based on their Language distribution in the MSLT network. We compare the results of our proposed family clustering method with the analysis conducted by sign language linguists and then train dedicated translation models for each family in the many-to-one translation scenario. Our experiments on the SP-10 dataset demonstrate that our approach can achieve a balance between translation accuracy and computational cost by regulating the number of language families."
}
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<abstract>Sign Language Translation (SLT) bridges the communication gap between deaf and hearing individuals by converting sign language videos into spoken language texts. While most SLT research has focused on bilingual translation models, the recent surge in interest has led to the exploration of Multilingual Sign Language Translation (MSLT). However, MSLT presents unique challenges due to the diversity of sign languages across nations. This diversity can lead to cross-linguistic conflicts and hinder translation accuracy. To use the similarity of actions and semantics between sign languages to alleviate conflict, we propose a novel approach that leverages sign language families to improve MSLT performance. Sign languages were clustered into families automatically based on their Language distribution in the MSLT network. We compare the results of our proposed family clustering method with the analysis conducted by sign language linguists and then train dedicated translation models for each family in the many-to-one translation scenario. Our experiments on the SP-10 dataset demonstrate that our approach can achieve a balance between translation accuracy and computational cost by regulating the number of language families.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Improving Multilingual Sign Language Translation with Automatically Clustered Language Family Information
%A Zhang, Ruiquan
%A Hu, Cong
%A Yu, Pei
%A Chen, Yidong
%Y Rambow, Owen
%Y Wanner, Leo
%Y Apidianaki, Marianna
%Y Al-Khalifa, Hend
%Y Eugenio, Barbara Di
%Y Schockaert, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%D 2025
%8 January
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Abu Dhabi, UAE
%F zhang-etal-2025-improving
%X Sign Language Translation (SLT) bridges the communication gap between deaf and hearing individuals by converting sign language videos into spoken language texts. While most SLT research has focused on bilingual translation models, the recent surge in interest has led to the exploration of Multilingual Sign Language Translation (MSLT). However, MSLT presents unique challenges due to the diversity of sign languages across nations. This diversity can lead to cross-linguistic conflicts and hinder translation accuracy. To use the similarity of actions and semantics between sign languages to alleviate conflict, we propose a novel approach that leverages sign language families to improve MSLT performance. Sign languages were clustered into families automatically based on their Language distribution in the MSLT network. We compare the results of our proposed family clustering method with the analysis conducted by sign language linguists and then train dedicated translation models for each family in the many-to-one translation scenario. Our experiments on the SP-10 dataset demonstrate that our approach can achieve a balance between translation accuracy and computational cost by regulating the number of language families.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.241/
%P 3579-3588
Markdown (Informal)
[Improving Multilingual Sign Language Translation with Automatically Clustered Language Family Information](https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.241/) (Zhang et al., COLING 2025)
ACL