Sign Language Machine Translation

This book, for the first time, collects important current topics in the area of sign language translation in a single volume. The topic is introduced more generally to benefit newcomers to the field before diving into the current state-of-the-art methods of Sign Language Machine Translation (SLMT), together with an in-depth description of issues specific to this topic, including: an introduction to and historical overview of SLMT; ethical issues related to the engagement of and with deaf users; the importance of data; the sign languages of Europe; sign language recognition and synthesis, including via avatars; data-driven and linguistically-informed models of SLMT; gloss translation; fingerspelling; SLMT communication; and SLMT in practice. Of interest to MT developers and users as well as people working in deaf studies, this volume presents cutting-edge research on machine translation in the field of deaf studies.