Taking an image and a natural language sentence as input, a referring image segmentation (RIS) model is required to predict a mask for the object described by the sentence.

Sign language translation (SL T) aims to interpret sign video sequences into text-based natural language sentences.

Recent advancements in machine learning have spurred growing interests in automated interpreting quality assessment. Nevertheless, existing research suffers from insufficient examination of language use quality, unsatisfactory modeling effectiveness due to data scarcity and imbalance, and a lack of efforts to explain model predictions. To address these gaps, we propose a multi-dimensional modeling framework that integrates feature engineering, data augmentation, and explainable machine learning. This approach prioritizes explainability over ``black box'' predictions by utilizing only construct-relevant, transparent features and conducting Shapley Value (SHAP) analysis. Our results demonstrate strong predictive performance on a novel English-Chinese consecutive interpreting dataset, identifying BLEURT and CometKiwi scores to be the strongest predictive features for fidelity, pause-related features for fluency, and Chinese-specific phraseological diversity metrics for language use. Overall, by placing particular emphasis on explainability, we present a scalable, reliable, and transparent alternative to traditional human evaluation, facilitating the provision of detailed diagnostic feedback for learners and supporting self-regulated learning advantages not afforded by automated scores in isolation.

Millions of individuals worldwide are affected by deafness and hearing impairment. Sign language serves as a sophisticated means of communication for the deaf and hard of hearing. However, in societies that prioritize spoken languages, sign language often faces underestimation, leading to communication barriers and social exclusion. The Continuous Bangla Sign Language Translation project aims to address this gap by enhancing translation methods. While recent approaches leverage transformer architecture for state-of-the-art results, our method integrates graph-based methods with the transformer architecture. This fusion, combining transformer and STGCN-LSTM architectures, proves more effective in gloss-free translation. Our contributions include architectural fusion, exploring various fusion strategies, and achieving a new state-of-the-art performance on diverse sign language datasets, namely RWTH-PHOENIX-2014T, CSL-Daily, How2Sign, and BornilDB v1.0. Our approach demonstrates superior performance compared to current translation outcomes across all datasets, showcasing notable improvements of BLEU-4 scores of 4.01, 2.07, and 0.5, surpassing those of GASLT, GASLT and slt_how2sign in RWTH-PHOENIX-2014T, CSL-Daily, and How2Sign, respectively. Also, we introduce benchmarking on the BornilDB v1.0 dataset for the first time. Our method sets a benchmark for future research, emphasizing the importance of gloss-free translation to improve communication accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing.