Sign-Language Translator
The first sign-language dictionary that's searchable by gesture.
From: Technology Review - 01/12/2009
By: Jennifer Chu

Bilingual dictionaries are usually a two-way street: you can look up a word
in English and find, say, its Spanish equivalent, but you can also do the
reverse. Sign-language dictionaries, however, translate only from written
words to gestures. This can be hugely frustrating, particularly for parents
of deaf children who want to understand unfamiliar gestures, or deaf people
who want to interact online using their primary language. So Boston
University (BU) researchers are developing a searchable dictionary for sign
language, in which any user can enter a gesture into a dictionary's search
engine from her own laptop by signing in front of a built-in camera. 

Submitted by Jerry Weisman

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/21944/page1/

Links:
Large Lexicon Gesture Representation, Recognition, and Retrieval
http://www.cs.bu.edu/groups/ivc/html/project_view.php?id=104

Stan Sclaroff
http://www.cs.bu.edu/~sclaroff/

Carol Neidle
http://www.bu.edu/asllrp/carol.html

Thad Starner
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/

Gesture-based American Sign Language (ASL) Game for Deaf Children
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ccg/projects/copycat/

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Sign language translator in development for Internet
From: IEEE Computer Society - New in Computing Now - 01/21/2009

Boston University researchers are developing a searchable online dictionary
for sign language, hoping to provide a way for hearing-impaired viewers to
translate their primary means of communication into English. Current
technology only allows traditional languages to be translated into sign
language, but not the other way around. The new system would recognize
gestures and facial expressions made in front of a camera and define them
with a catalog of American Sign Language gestures recorded in a studio.