mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Including Signed Languages in Natural Language Processing

arXiv 2105.05222 ↗First posted 11 May 2021cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 68

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Abstract (arXiv)

Signed languages are the primary means of communication for many deaf and hard of hearing individuals. Since signed languages exhibit all the fundamental linguistic properties of natural language, we believe that tools and theories of Natural Language Processing (NLP) are crucial towards its modeling. However, existing research in Sign Language Processing (SLP) seldom attempt to explore and leverage the linguistic organization of signed languages. This position paper calls on the NLP community to include signed languages as a research area with high social and scientific impact. We first discuss the linguistic properties of signed languages to consider during their modeling. Then, we review the limitations of current SLP models and identify the open challenges to extend NLP to signed languages. Finally, we urge (1) the adoption of an efficient tokenization method; (2) the development of linguistically-informed models; (3) the collection of real-world signed language data; (4) the inclusion of local signed language communities as an active and leading voice in the direction of research.

Key facts. Cited by 68 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 22 of its 121 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 May 2021.

Builds on

22 of 121 references.

References · 22

  1. 2018OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fieldscited by 1,162
  2. 2017Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomycited by 1,013
  3. 2018DensePose: Dense Human Pose Estimation In The Wildcited by 575
  4. 2020MLS: A Large-Scale Multilingual Dataset for Speech Researchcited by 476
  5. 2019Massively Multilingual Neural Machine Translation in the Wild: Findings and Challengescited by 257
  6. 2020Sign Language Transformers: Joint End-to-end Sign Language Recognition and Translationcited by 256
  7. 2019Word-level Deep Sign Language Recognition from Video: A New Large-scale Dataset and Methods Comparisoncited by 218
  8. 2020Progressive Transformers for End-to-End Sign Language Productioncited by 120
  9. 2018Construction of the Literature Graph in Semantic Scholarcited by 118
  10. 2018MS-ASL: A Large-Scale Data Set and Benchmark for Understanding American Sign Languagecited by 118
  11. 2018Video-based Sign Language Recognition without Temporal Segmentationcited by 88
  12. 2019Sign Language Recognition, Generation, and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Perspectivecited by 87
10 more
  1. 2020AUTSL: A Large Scale Multi-modal Turkish Sign Language Dataset and Baseline Methodscited by 75
  2. 2020Multi-channel Transformers for Multi-articulatory Sign Language Translationcited by 71
  3. 2018Neural Sign Language Translation based on Human Keypoint Estimationcited by 65
  4. 2020Quantitative Survey of the State of the Art in Sign Language Recognitioncited by 50
  5. 2017Adversarial PoseNet: A Structure-aware Convolutional Network for Human Pose Estimationcited by 35
  6. 2020Everybody Sign Now: Translating Spoken Language to Photo Realistic Sign Language Videocited by 34
  7. 2020Real-Time Sign Language Detection using Human Pose Estimationcited by 29
  8. 2019Fingerspelling recognition in the wild with iterative visual attentioncited by 28
  9. 2018American Sign Language fingerspelling recognition in the wildcited by 20
  10. 2020A Comprehensive Study on Deep Learning-based Methods for Sign Language Recognitioncited by 12

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 4; 2022: 13; 2023: 11; 2024: 21; 2025: 6; 2026: 13.

68 papers.

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  1. 2021Systematic Inequalities in Language Technology Performance across the World's Languagescited by 120
  2. 2023YouTube-ASL: A Large-Scale, Open-Domain American Sign Language-English Parallel Corpuscited by 75
  3. 2022Open-Domain Sign Language Translation Learned from Online Videocited by 72
  4. 2025Uni-Sign: Toward Unified Sign Language Understanding at Scalecited by 56
  5. 2024Towards Privacy-Aware Sign Language Translation at Scalecited by 44
  6. 2023Sign Language Translation from Instructional Videoscited by 39
  7. 2023SLTUNET: A Simple Unified Model for Sign Language Translationcited by 35
  8. 2023ASL Citizen: A Community-Sourced Dataset for Advancing Isolated Sign Language Recognitioncited by 34
  9. 2021OpenHands: Making Sign Language Recognition Accessible with Pose-based Pretrained Models across Languagescited by 31
  10. 2021BBC-Oxford British Sign Language Datasetcited by 28
  11. 2023It Takes Two to Tango: Navigating Conceptualizations of NLP Tasks and Measurements of Performancecited by 26
  12. 2022Considerations for meaningful sign language machine translation based on glossescited by 25
38 more
  1. 2024Factorized Learning Assisted with Large Language Model for Gloss-free Sign Language Translationcited by 24
  2. 2024Signs as Tokens: A Retrieval-Enhanced Multilingual Sign Language Generatorcited by 21
  3. 2024SignCLIP: Connecting Text and Sign Language by Contrastive Learningcited by 20
  4. 2024Systemic Biases in Sign Language AI Research: A Deaf-Led Call to Reevaluate Research Agendascited by 19
  5. 2024SignMusketeers: An Efficient Multi-Stream Approach for Sign Language Translation at Scalecited by 19
  6. 2022Machine Translation between Spoken Languages and Signed Languages Represented in SignWritingcited by 18
  7. 2023The Sem-Lex Benchmark: Modeling ASL Signs and Their Phonemescited by 17
  8. 2024The Call for Socially Aware Language Technologiescited by 13
  9. 2022Including Facial Expressions in Contextual Embeddings for Sign Language Generationcited by 12
  10. 2022A Token-level Contrastive Framework for Sign Language Translationcited by 10
  11. 2024FLEURS-ASL: Including American Sign Language in Massively Multilingual Multitask Evaluationcited by 10
  12. 2022Modeling Intensification for Sign Language Generation: A Computational Approachcited by 9
  13. 2021Transcribing Natural Languages for The Deaf via Neural Editing Programscited by 7
  14. 2022WLASL-LEX: a Dataset for Recognising Phonological Properties in American Sign Languagecited by 6
  15. 2023Self-Supervised Video Transformers for Isolated Sign Language Recognitioncited by 6
  16. 2024iSign: A Benchmark for Indian Sign Language Processingcited by 6
  17. 2025Meaningful Pose-Based Sign Language Evaluationcited by 6
  18. 2022Searching for fingerspelled content in American Sign Languagecited by 5
  19. 2024A Spatio-Temporal Representation Learning as an Alternative to Traditional Glosses in Sign Language Translation and Productioncited by 5
  20. 2022Scaling Back-Translation with Domain Text Generation for Sign Language Gloss Translationcited by 4
  21. 2024Unsupervised Sign Language Translation and Generationcited by 4
  22. 2024Reconsidering Sentence-Level Sign Language Translationcited by 4
  23. 2025SignX: Continuous Sign Recognition in Compact Pose-Rich Latent Spacecited by 4
  24. 2025SiLVERScore: Semantically-Aware Embeddings for Sign Language Generation Evaluationcited by 4
  25. 2026MaDiS: Taming Masked Diffusion Language Models for Sign Language Generationcited by 4
  26. 2022Explore More Guidance: A Task-aware Instruction Network for Sign Language Translation Enhanced with Data Augmentationcited by 3
  27. 2022Clean Text and Full-Body Transformer: Microsoft's Submission to the WMT22 Shared Task on Sign Language Translationcited by 3
  28. 2023Improving Sign Recognition with Phonologycited by 3
  29. 20243D-LEX v1.0: 3D Lexicons for American Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlandscited by 3
  30. 2024Generating Signed Language Instructions in Large-Scale Dialogue Systemscited by 3
  31. 20242M-BELEBELE: Highly Multilingual Speech and American Sign Language Comprehension Datasetcited by 3
  32. 2022Building and curating conversational corpora for diversity-aware language science and technologycited by 2
  33. 2023On the Importance of Signer Overlap for Sign Language Detectioncited by 2
  34. 2023ISLTranslate: Dataset for Translating Indian Sign Languagecited by 2
  35. 2023Active Learning for Multilingual Fingerspelling Corporacited by 2
  36. 2024SignBLEU: Automatic Evaluation of Multi-channel Sign Language Translationcited by 2
  37. 2024The NGT200 Dataset: Geometric Multi-View Isolated Sign Recognitioncited by 2
  38. 2026CNSL-bench: Benchmarking the Sign Language Understanding Capabilities of MLLMs on Chinese National Sign Languagecited by 2

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