MOSI, from word to sign: a bilingual reading aid from French to Langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB)

The Sign Language of French-speaking Belgium (LSFB) has acquired several resources in recent years. A dictionary, developed and enriched since 2010 by the LSFB asbl association (https://dico.lsfb.be/). A contextual bilingual dictionary, developed at the University of Namur from LSFB-Lab research data and put online in 2022 (https://dico.corpus-lsfb.be/) . Today, MOSI brings these two resources to the user's fingertips, while enabling the signing community to contribute to the enrichment of the data.

MOSI features

From a web browser, a reader will now be able to highlight a word and see a video appear with the corresponding sign. It will also be possible to carry out manual searches in the database, which currently boasts over 7,000 signs. Sign language speakers will be able to add new signs to this resource. MOSI is thus conceived as a bilingual (French - LSFB) and collaborative tool; it is both a site and a web extension.

MOSI is accessible free of charge: https://www.mot-signe.be/

Based on research carried out at the University of Namur (LSFB-Lab and the NaDI institute), the LSFB asbl association and the partnership forged between UNamur and Ecole et Surdité 25 years ago, MOSI will be particularly useful for students, adults, families, teachers, speech therapists, interpreters and anyone working in the field of deafness. The test phase demonstrated the enthusiasm of the 40 registered users, who carried out 30,000 searches and recorded 500 signs.

History of linguistic research on LSFB

Linguistic research on LSFB began in 2000 at the University of Namur, pioneering the field in French-speaking Belgium. Since then, a team has developed, the Laboratoire de langue des signes de Belgique francophone (or LSFB-Lab). Several fruitful collaborations between the LSFB-Lab and UNamur's Faculty of Computer Science have led to ambitious projects, such as the bilingual and contextual dictionary: a dictionary that can be queried in both French and LSFB, via a webcam, and provides access to translations illustrated with examples in context, taken from real conversations.

Collaborative teamwork

The origins of MOSI lie in the needs of students and teachers in the bilingual classes at Sainte-Marie in Namur. A teacher, Magaly Ghesquière, was aware of the resources available, and had the idea of making them more accessible to students and teachers. A first version of the tool was developed by two students from the Faculty of Computer Science (Innocent Ye and Babacar Sow). This was followed by a collaboration between computer scientists from the PreCISE center and the HuMaLearn laboratory at UNamur (Jérôme Fink, Pierre Poitier, Benoît Frénay, Anthony Cleve), the LSFB-Lab (Sibylle Fonzé, Laurence Meurant and Bruno Sonnemans), École et Surdité teachers (guided by Magaly Ghesquière and Sibylle Fonzé), and the LSFB asbl association (Bruno Sonnemans) which led to the completed version of the tool.

Laurence Meurant, Head of LSFB-Lab and Director of the Naltt Institute

"Sign language research and the deaf and hard-of-hearing community can only develop together. The community inspires research, trusts researchers and participates in the collection of quality data. In return, research has a duty to share its work with as many people as possible, in particular to promote bilingualism between sign language and the surrounding majority language."

Magali Ghesquière, Educational coordinator for ASBL école et surdité

"Despite the progress made, French sign language bilingual education is still sorely lacking in resources and tools for both students and their teachers. By bringing together players from the signing community at large: researchers, teachers, interpreters and all LSFB speakers, the MOSI project offers the hope of a concrete response. It's a citizen's advance that's both generous and collaborative."