John C. McDonald


2022

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Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology: The Junction of the Visual and the Textual: Challenges and Perspectives
Eleni Efthimiou | Stavroula-Evita Fotinea | Thomas Hanke | John C. McDonald | Dimitar Shterionov | Rosalee Wolfe
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology: The Junction of the Visual and the Textual: Challenges and Perspectives

2021

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The Myth of Signing Avatars
John C. McDonald | Rosalee Wolfe | Eleni Efthimiou | Evita Fontinea | Frankie Picron | Davy Van Landuyt | Tina Sioen | Annelies Braffort | Michael Filhol | Sarah Ebling | Thomas Hanke | Verena Krausneker
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Automatic Translation for Signed and Spoken Languages (AT4SSL)

Development of automatic translation between signed and spoken languages has lagged behind the development of automatic translation between spoken languages, but it is a common misperception that extending machine translation techniques to include signed languages should be a straightforward process. A contributing factor is the lack of an acceptable method for displaying sign language apart from interpreters on video. This position paper examines the challenges of displaying a signed language as a target in automatic translation, analyses the underlying causes and suggests strategies to develop display technologies that are acceptable to sign language communities.

2020

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The Synthesis of Complex Shape Deployments in Sign Language
Michael Filhol | John C. McDonald
Proceedings of the LREC2020 9th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Sign Language Resources in the Service of the Language Community, Technological Challenges and Application Perspectives

Proform constructs such as classifier predicates and size and shape specifiers are essential elements of Sign Language communication, but have remained a challenge for synthesis due to their highly variable nature. In contrast to frozen signs, which may be pre-animated or recorded, their variability necessitates a new approach both to their linguistic description and to their synthesis in animation. Though the specification and animation of classifier predicates was covered in previous works, size and shape specifiers have to this date remain unaddressed. This paper presents an efficient method for linguistically describing such specifiers using a small number of rules that cover a large range of possible constructs. It continues to show that with a small number of services in a signing avatar, these descriptions can be synthesized in a natural way that captures the essential gestural actions while also including the subtleties of human motion that make the signing legible.