On the Web Trilingual Sign Language Dictionary to Learn the foreign Sign Language without Learning a Target Spoken Language

Abstract

This paper describes a trilingual sign language dictionary (Japanese Sign Language and American Sign Language, and Korean Sign Language) which helps those who learn each sign language directly from their mother sign language. Our discussion covers two main points. The first describes the necessity of a trilingual dictionary. Since there is no “universal sign language” or real “international sign language” deaf people should learn at least four languages: they want to talk to people whose mother tongue is different from their owns, the mother sign language, the mother spoken language as the first intermediate language, the target spoken language as the second intermediate language, and the sign language in which they want to communicate. Those two spoken languages become language barriers for deaf people and our trilingual dictionary will remove the barrier. The second describes the use of computer. As the use of computers becomes widespread, it is increasingly convenient to study through computer software or Internet facilities. Our WWW dictionary system provides deaf people with an easy means of access using their mother-sign language, which means they don't have to overcome the barrier of learning a foreign spoken language. It also provides a way for people who are going to learn three sign languages to look up new vocabulary. We are further planning to examine how our dictionary system could be used to educate and assist deaf people.

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