*Article* **3D Avatar Approach for Continuous Sign Movement Using Speech/Text**

**Debashis Das Chakladar 1, Pradeep Kumar 1, Shubham Mandal 1, Partha Pratim Roy 1, Masakazu Iwamura 2 and Byung-Gyu Kim 3,\***


**Abstract:** Sign language is a visual language for communication used by hearing-impaired people with the help of hand and finger movements. Indian Sign Language (ISL) is a well-developed and standard way of communication for hearing-impaired people living in India. However, other people who use spoken language always face difficulty while communicating with a hearing-impaired person due to lack of sign language knowledge. In this study, we have developed a 3D avatarbased sign language learning system that converts the input speech/text into corresponding sign movements for ISL. The system consists of three modules. Initially, the input speech is converted into an English sentence. Then, that English sentence is converted into the corresponding ISL sentence using the Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique. Finally, the motion of the 3D avatar is defined based on the ISL sentence. The translation module achieves a 10.50 SER (Sign Error Rate) score.

**Keywords:** Indian Sign Language (ISL); natural language processing; avatar; sign movement; contextfree grammar
