Sign database a sound idea

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Scotsman.com News - Education - Sign database a sound idea

EXPERTS at Heriot-Watt University are to create a database of sign language used by mute and deaf people in Scotland.

The university will launch the £1.2 million study with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Starting in the new year, Heriot-Watt's Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies will create video-recordings of all the vocabulary used in Scotland.

They will film deaf signers, deaf adults with deaf parents and those with hearing parents, and people from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds and age groups.

Professor Graham Turner, from Heriot-Watt's School of Management and Languages, said: "It has long been recognised that, just like spoken language, British Sign Language usage varies from place to place around the country.

"Now, for the first time, advances in technology have made it possible to collect video recordings of sign language that can be stored digitally, given searchable linguistic descriptions and accessed over the internet."
 
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