CSLML: a markup language for expressive Chinese sign language synthesis

• Published in: Computer animation and virtual worlds 2009-06, Vol.20 (2-3), p.237-245
• Main Authors: Ye, Kejia, Yin, Baocai, Wang, Lichun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chinese sign language synthesis; representation language; virtual human
• ISSN: 1546-4261; 1546-427X
• DOI: 10.1002/cav.307

This paper presents a Chinese Sign Language Markup Language (CSLML), which is developed for expressive Chinese sign language synthesis by introducing features and structure of sign language prosody. The tags of CSLML are divided into two levels: function level and phonetic level. Function level provides information about signed content and prosody, so it facilitates text annotating for text‐driven automatic synthetic system and adapts to diversified synthetic methods, such as motion capture animation or image‐based synthesis, which may not be good at processing lower‐level information. Phonetic level provides detailed behavioral manners based on phonetics and phonology to interpret the meaning in function level. It facilitates creation and edit of any motions. The two levels co‐exist in CSLML documents and high‐level description can be mapped into corresponding low‐level behavior to provide one‐to‐many variability and expression of synthesis. Therefore, we also introduce a framework for this mapping processing and exhibit results of our animated prototype system based on this framework. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this paper we present a Chinese Sign Language Markup Language (CSLML), which integrates prosodic information into grammatical regulation to provide a more effective way in describing the features of Chinese Sign Language. Besides, CSLML is divided into two layers, function level and phonetic level, the mapping rules between them can be diversified to increase the flexibility and expressivity of synthesis.