# Sign Language Production: A Review

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.15910 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15910/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 89 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0473/) (2014)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.3215/) (2014)
- [Effective Approaches to Attention-based Neural Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.04025/) (2015)
- [Conditional Image Generation with PixelCNN Decoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05328/) (2016)
- [Pixel Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.06759/) (2016)
- [Pose Guided Person Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09368/) (2017)
- [Photographic Image Synthesis with Cascaded Refinement Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.09405/) (2017)
- [DRAW: A Recurrent Neural Network For Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.04623/) (2015)
- [How2Sign: A Large-scale Multimodal Dataset for Continuous American Sign Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08143/) (2020)
- [Deformable GANs for Pose-based Human Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00055/) (2017)
- [Progressive Transformers for End-to-End Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14874/) (2020)
- [Attribute2Image: Conditional Image Generation from Visual Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00570/) (2015)
- [Multi-channel Transformers for Multi-articulatory Sign Language Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00299/) (2020)
- [Neural Machine Translation in Linear Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.10099/) (2016)
- [Neural Sign Language Translation based on Human Keypoint Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11436/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Training for Multi-Channel Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12405/) (2020)
- [Everybody Sign Now: Translating Spoken Language to Photo Realistic Sign Language Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09846/) (2020)
- [Real-Time Sign Language Detection using Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04637/) (2020)
- [A Multi-modal Machine Learning Approach and Toolkit to Automate Recognition of Early Stages of Dementia among British Sign Language Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00536/) (2020)
- [Avatar-independent scripting for real-time gesture animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02961/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [One-Stage 3D Whole-Body Mesh Recovery with Component Aware Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16160/) (2023)
- [SignCLIP: Connecting Text and Sign Language by Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01264/) (2024)
- [A Simple Baseline for Spoken Language to Sign Language Translation with 3D Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04730/) (2024)
- [SignAvatar: Sign Language 3D Motion Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07974/) (2024)
- [All You Need In Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01609/) (2022)
- [Sign Stitching: A Novel Approach to Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07663/) (2024)
- [TriHorn-Net: A Model for Accurate Depth-Based 3D Hand Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07117/) (2022)
- [ZS-SLR: Zero-Shot Sign Language Recognition from RGB-D Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10059/) (2021)
- [Multi-Modal Zero-Shot Sign Language Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00796/) (2021)
- [Deep-Disaster: Unsupervised Disaster Detection and Localization Using Visual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00050/) (2022)
- [Word separation in continuous sign language using isolated signs and post-processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00923/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Deep Multi-modal Learning for Body Language Recognition and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08849/) (2023)
- [Select and Reorder: A Novel Approach for Neural Sign Language Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11532/) (2024)
- [3D-LEX v1.0: 3D Lexicons for American Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01901/) (2024)
- [Neural Sign Reenactor: Deep Photorealistic Sign Language Retargeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01470/) (2022)
- [The NGT200 Dataset: Geometric Multi-View Isolated Sign Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15284/) (2024)
- [A Non-Anatomical Graph Structure for isolated hand gesture separation in continuous gesture sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07619/) (2022)
- [A Transformer Model for Boundary Detection in Continuous Sign Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14720/) (2024)
- [Diversity-Aware Sign Language Production through a Pose Encoding Variational Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10423/) (2024)
- [Flick: Few Labels Text Classification using K-Aware Intermediate Learning in Multi-Task Low-Resource Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10292/) (2025)
- [SignNet: Single Channel Sign Generation using Metric Embedded Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02848/) (2022)
- [Fusion Embedding for Pose-Guided Person Image Synthesis with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07333/) (2024)
- [Towards Skeletal and Signer Noise Reduction in Sign Language Production via Quaternion-Based Pose Encoding and Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14574/) (2025)
- [Semantic Hardness Is Not Visual Hardness: Sign-Aware Hard Negative Mining for Sign Language Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09263/) (2026)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Semantics and Reconstruction:Unifying Sign Language Translation and Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09045/) (2026)
- [Machine Translation for Sign Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00881/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sign Language is the dominant yet non-primary form of communication language used in the deaf and hearing-impaired community. To make an easy and mutual communication between the hearing-impaired and the hearing communities, building a robust system capable of translating the spoken language into sign language and vice versa is fundamental. To this end, sign language recognition and production are two necessary parts for making such a two-way system. Sign language recognition and production need to cope with some critical challenges. In this survey, we review recent advances in Sign Language Production (SLP) and related areas using deep learning. This survey aims to briefly summarize recent achievements in SLP, discussing their advantages, limitations, and future directions of research.