Gloves Translate Sign Language Into Auditory Speech 78
Zothecula writes about some pretty cool sensor gloves. From the article: "Since beginning in 2003, the Microsoft Imagine Cup has tasked students the world over with developing technology aimed at solving real-world problems. In this, its 10th year, students were asked to build their project around a specific Millennium Development Goal ... The winners have just been announced ... [and winning] first place (and US$25,000) in the Software Design category was the Ukraine's quadSquad with their EnableTalk gloves that translate sign language into speech in real time."
Re:And thousands of interpreters stomachs sank (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong translation direction, this going from signs to speech so a deaf person doesn't have to carry a txt2speech or a notepad and pen or learn to speak (yes deaf people can learn to speak, like one of my friends did, confuses the hell out of people who assume being able to speak means being able to hear)
Another thing is one of my kids former school teachers worked her way thru school in the opposite direction translating speech to signs. The general impression I got was it was much closer to the fry cook pay level than the $20 claimed above. You can get $20 if you have deep technical knowledge and translate tech docs from english to Chinese, or if you have a security clearance and know Arabic or other ME languages, but...
Not going to work (Score:5, Informative)
'Real' sign languages (like ASL) are much harder to translate because they are somewhat non-linear. A single gesture can describe several things at once: size, direction, emotional state, etc. There's no way you can translate it without fully understanding the context of the speech. And we all know how good computers are at such tasks...
Finger Spelling is NOT Sign Language (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up! Finger Spelling is *not* Sign Language. If all this does is translate finger spelling into synthesized speech, the same thing could be done much faster and cheaper by just typing the words on a standard smartphone device.
This is not even cool. It is just, plain, wrong in so many ways. All of the money and hype spent making and marketing this device would reap 10X as much benefit if the same money were spent educating people about the real nature of deafness and sign language. The developers of this waste of time could start by taking a class about deafness themselves.
The fact that Slashdot perpetuates the inaccurate headline equating finger spelling with sign language just demonstrates how ignorant we all are.