A Translation System from European Portuguese to Portuguese Sign Language

The deaf community is usually isolated from the rest of the hearing community, and this problem is found in many countries, including Portugal, where only about 1% of the population know Portuguese Sign Language. There are still no suitable applications to help them and, therefore, in this work, a system is proposed that translates European Portuguese into Portuguese Sign Language, showing the translation to an end user through a 3D Avatar. The system is divided into two components, the first being the textual translation system and the second the translations’ animated representation, using a 3D Avatar. The former uses a hybrid solution of rule-based and neural approaches. The latter uses a motion capture system to represent the signs’ gestures and creates a visual interface to animate the translation through an avatar. The implementation consists in a system receiving text in Portuguese, converting it into Portuguese Sign language, getting the corresponding animations from a database and animating a 3D Avatar with these animations. The system aims to assist deaf people communicating in all scenarios of the everyday life. The first results obtained are very promising for the added value of the system under development.