Continuous Sign Language Recognition and Its Translation into Intonation-Colored Speech

Sensors (Basel). 2023 Jul 13;23(14):6383. doi: 10.3390/s23146383.

Abstract

This article is devoted to solving the problem of converting sign language into a consistent text with intonation markup for subsequent voice synthesis of sign phrases by speech with intonation. The paper proposes an improved method of continuous recognition of sign language, the results of which are transmitted to a natural language processor based on analyzers of morphology, syntax, and semantics of the Kazakh language, including morphological inflection and the construction of an intonation model of simple sentences. This approach has significant practical and social significance, as it can lead to the development of technologies that will help people with disabilities to communicate and improve their quality of life. As a result of the cross-validation of the model, we obtained an average test accuracy of 0.97 and an average val_accuracy of 0.90 for model evaluation. We also identified 20 sentence structures of the Kazakh language with their intonational model.

Keywords: intonational speech synthesis; long short-term memory; natural language processing; sign language recognition; spatiotemporal features.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Language
  • Quality of Life
  • Sign Language
  • Speech Perception*
  • Speech*