TSTMT: step towards an accurate Thai sign translation

We propose Thai sign to Thai machine translation (TSTMT), an alternative approach to machine translation which is used for translating from Thai sign language into Thai text. TSTMT performs the translation by recognizing an image sequence of signs as sign words and synthesizing a target sentence from those sign words. TSTMT represents a hybrid of image recognition and natural language processing techniques. This approach is comprised of seven modules which are straightforward and extendable. The applications of TSTMT can be used to facilitate learning in deaf people and to help them to communicate with hearing people via their own language. In this paper the idea and initial experiment are presented.