Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators

2026-02-10

AI Summary

This study addresses longstanding critiques from the Deaf community regarding existing sign language translation technologies, which often oversimplify the linguistic and cultural complexity of sign languages. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 Chinese Deaf video creators and integrating content analysis with sociolinguistic (trans)languaging theory, the research foregrounds Deaf-led online translation practices. It reveals the multilingual and multicultural strategies these creators employ when addressing bilingual audiences of both Deaf and hearing individuals, as well as the challenges they encounter. By centering Deaf agency and lived experience, the study challenges conventional paradigms in sign language translation technology and offers an empirical foundation and innovative directions for designing more culturally sensitive and inclusive sign language translation systems.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Machine Translation, Multilinguality, Cross-Lingual NLP
• Computer Vision: Language and Vision
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web search
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

Abstract

While sign language translation systems promise to enhance deaf people's access to information and communication, they have been met with strong skepticism from deaf communities due to risks of misrepresenting and oversimplifying the richness of signed communication in technologies. This article provides empirical evidence of the complexity of translation work involved in deaf communication through interviews with 13 deaf Chinese content creators who actively produce and share sign language content on video sharing platforms with both deaf and hearing audiences. By studying this unique group of content creators, our findings highlight the nuances of sign language translation, showing how deaf creators create content with multilingualism and multiculturalism in mind, support meaning making across languages and cultures, and navigate politics involved in their translation work. Grounded in these deaf-led translation practices, we draw on the sociolinguistic concept of (trans)languaging to re-conceptualize and reimagine the design of sign language translation systems.

Problem

• sign language translation
• deaf community
• misrepresentation
• oversimplification
• multilingualism

Innovation

• sign language translation
• deaf-led design
• translanguaging
• multilingualism
• sociolinguistics