A Bilingual Dictionary Mexican Sign Language-Spanish/Spanish-Mexican Sign Language

Abstract

We present a three-part bilingual specialized dictionary Mexican Sign Language-Spanish / Spanish-Mexican Sign Language. This dictionary will be the outcome of a three-years agreement between the Italian “Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche” and the Mexican Conacyt. Although many other sign language dictionaries have been provided to deaf communities, there are no Mexican Sign Language dictionaries in Mexico, yet. We want to stress on the specialized feature of the proposed dictionary: the bilingual dictionary will contain frequently used general Spanish forms along with scholastic course specific specialized words whose meanings warrant comprehension of school curricula. We emphasize that this aspect of the bilingual dictionary can have a deep social impact, since we will furnish to deaf people the possibility to get competence in official language, which is necessary to ensure access to school curriculum and to become full-fledged citizens. From a technical point of view, the dictionary consists of a relational database, where we have saved the sign parameters and a graphical user interface especially designed to allow deaf children to retrieve signs using the relevant parameters and,thus, the meaning of the sign in Spanish.

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