Radka Těšínská Lomičková: Cistercian and Benedictine Sign Language in the Middle Age Sign language is an important communication phenomenon that has existed for a thousand years. In medieval monasteries signs were used to enable simple communication of messages when rules of silence forbade monks from speaking. This thesis concentrates on a study of sign language communication in Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries during the Middle Ages. In doing so it describes the history of sign language in Europe between the 10th and 15th centuries. Furthermore it shows that sign language was not only used in the center of the order but in the Czech Republic as well. This thesis provides a detailed discussion of sign lexicons which are similar to a monolingual dictionary and are the basic and central source of information about each language. Lexicons contain words and short descriptions of how to make each hand sign. A careful analysis of one particular sign lexicon, called Siquis (which was used in Central Europe in the 15th century), reveals new information about daily life in medieval monasteries. The primary focus of the Siquis lexicon was liturgy, food and drink, utensils, persons, and activities. This thesis concentrates on both singular words and on the description of the signs in the lexicons....

Los estudios sobre la interpretación de señas han estado principalmente enfocados en la comprensión teórica de la especialidad (Napier, 2004; Janzen 2005; Bontempo, 2015), por lo que existe un vacío en cuanto a trabajos de corte empírico. En Perú, dicho vacío se refleja en la ausencia de centros educativos de nivel superior que expidan un título que acredite la especialidad. Por ello, en esta investigación reconstruimos los procesos que conforman la trayectoria profesional y laboral de cinco intérpretes de señas peruanos, fundadores de la Asociación de Intérpretes y Guías de Intérpretes de Lengua de Señas del Perú (ASISEP), para comprender sus perfiles sobre la base de su desarrollo y ejercicio profesionales a través del tiempo. Tras aplicar entrevistas semiestructuradas, concluimos que los participantes debieron complementar su aprendizaje experiencial inicial con capacitación internacional para lograr ejercer profesionalmente. Esperamos que este estudio sirva de referencia a la comunidad de intérpretes interesada en el campo de la lengua de señas: / Studies on sign language interpretation have been historically centered around theoretical comprehension (Napier, 2004; Janzen 2005; Bontempo, 2015), which has left a gap in empirical research on the subject. In Peru, this discrepancy is reflected on a lack of higher education institutions accredited to award degrees in this field. In our research, we delved into the processes that have shaped the study and career paths of five Peruvian sign language interpreters, founders of the Asociación de Intérpretes y Guías de Intérpretes de Lengua de Señas del Perú (ASISEP) (Proposal: the Sign Language Interpreters Association of Peru); our goal was to better understand their profiles based on their professional development and practice through time. We found, through a series of semi-structured interviews, that participants had had to complement their initial learning experience with additional international training in order to work professionally. It is our aim that this study be of use as a reference for the interpreting community interested in the field of sign language. / Tesis

This diploma thesis deals with the education and communication of students with hearing impairment with a focus on the analysis of the level of understanding of information in sign language for students of special secondary schools for the hearing impaired. The theoretical part presents important concepts in this area, such as the definition of communication and communication options for the hearing impaired, as well as educational opportunities for the hearing impaired from a preschool level to a university and last but not least sign languages, their research in the world and Czech sign language as a native language of people with hearing impairment in the Czech Republic. The empirical part describes the research, which was conducted on 65 probands - high school students of the special school for students with a hearing impairment. The research is focused on the differences in the level of understanding of groups of students according to their identification data and also examined whether comprehension is affected by the complexity of the information transmitted (i.e. whether information at the level of ordinary conversation is better understood than a professional information). The research survey was of a qualitative nature and the main research method was a non-standardized questionnaire...

The aim of thesis is semiotic analysis of chosen audio-visual commercials of children's products. The thesis will contain introduction, ending, theoretic part and empiric part. I introduce semiotic like subject of science in theoretic part, explain concept of sign and semiosis. Next I will describe concepts "denotace", "konotace", verbal and nonverbal signs. Next I will focus on commercial. I will describe commercial discours and semiotic in commercial. I'll introduce television as medium of commercial and come to methods gaining attention of consumers. Next I will apply children's consumer, children's marketing, children's and television commercial, how perception of television commercial influences children of different age and how to eliminate influence of commerical to children. In empiric part I will do semiotic analysis of chosen audio-visual commercials of children's products. I introduce method of research and I will make efforts to confirm hypothese, that commercials use as method gaining attention of children's primarily emotions, but when it is commercial of children's product aim at adults (nappies, children's nutrition) use rather method of providing of informations. So it use different elements of signs. I will simultaneously expect reciprocal harmony between visual, verbal and audio...

In the area of Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR), deep learning models are trained to detect and classify images of traffic signs. The amount of data available to train these models is often limited, and collecting more data is time-consuming and expensive. A possible complement to traditional data acquisition, is to generate synthetic images with a generative machine learning model. This thesis investigates the use of denoising diffusion probabilistic models for generating synthetic data of one or multiple traffic sign classes, when providing different amount of real images for that class (classes). In the few-sample method, the number of images used was from 1 to 1000, and zero images were used in the zero-shot method. The results from the few-sample method show that combining synthetic images with real images when training a traffic sign classifier, increases the performance in 3 out of 6 investigated cases. The results indicate that the developed zero-shot method is useful if further refined, and potentially could enable generation of realistic images of signs not seen in the training data.

I takt med att döva personer i Sverige får ökad tillgång till alla områden i samhället börjar också antalet döva högskolestudenter på olika lärosäten runtom i landet att öka. Denna studie undersöker döva universitetsstudenters upplevelser av en utbildning i samarbete med teckenspråks- eller skrivtolk och har som mål att utöka kunskapen kring detta relativt outforskade område. I detta syfte utfördes sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med döva studenter vid lärosäten i Sverige där de fick svara på frågor om bland annat sin tillgång till tolkning, sin upplevelse av tolkningen och sin känsla av inkludering i klassen. Av resultaten framgår att studenterna utnyttjar möjligheten till tolkning på ett sätt som inte alltid reflekterar deras upplevda behov av det. Studenterna ställer sig övervägande positivt till tolkarnas arbete på högskolenivå. Det framgår även att studenterna i olika grad känner sig inkluderade i sin klass, både vad gäller relationer till lärare och till andra hörande studenter. Faktorer som kan ha påverkat studenternas intervjusvar är deras upplevda hörsel, nivån på deras nuvarande utbildning och dövmedvetenheten hos de lärare de mötts av. Då studien fokuserat på många aspekter av studenternas utbildning kan det inte dras djupgående slutsatser kring varje tema som framkommit. / As Deaf people in Sweden receive increased access to all areas of society, the number of Deaf students enrolled in higher education around the country increases. This study examines the experiences of Deaf university students regarding their education in collaboration with a sign language or speech-to-text interpreter and aims to expand the knowledge around this relatively unexplored field. For this purpose, seven semi-structured interviews were held with Deaf students at universities around Sweden, in which they were asked to answer questions regarding, among other things, their access to interpreters, impression of the interpreting received and feeling of inclusion in their class. The results show that the students do not always make use of interpreters in a way that reflects their perceived need for them. The students are generally positive regarding the interpreters’ work in a higher educational setting. It is also shown that the students feel included in their classes to varying degrees, both in regard to their relationships with teachers, and with other hearing students. Factors that may have affected the students’ responses are their perceived hearing, the level of their current education and the Deaf awareness of their lecturers. As the study has focused on many different aspects of the students’ education, no in-depth conclusions can be drawn regarding each of the subject matters raised.

No description available.

Master of Science / Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Malgorzata J. Rys / During the last several decades, the number of drivers and the number of senior citizens driving on U.S highways has increased significantly along with the number of traffic signs. The median age of the drivers has also increased due to the aging population. Traffic signs provide a plethora of necessary information - directions, guidance, warnings, regulations, and recreation. With today's congestion and higher speed, it's very important to recognize the need for brighter and easier to read signs to increase safety among drivers. In the recent years, there has been innovation in the field of traffic engineering, giving rise to numerous innovations in retro-reflective sheeting materials and fonts. It is important to identify the combination of font and retro-reflective sheeting material, which performs best by increasing the legibility distance between the driver and the sign during both day and night time conditions. The objective of the research was to determine the combination of font (among Clearview 5-W, Series E-Modified and Clearview 5-W-R) and retro-reflective sheeting materials (DG3, Type 4 and Type 1) that produces maximum legibility distance. The objective was also to study the safety benefits of the Clearview font. Both field and computer based tests were carried out to find out which combination of font and retro-reflective material produced maximum legibility distance. From field tests it was found that the Clearview 5-W-R font along with Type 1 reflective material produced the maximum legibility distance in day time conditions, whereas Clearview 5-W-R along with Type 4 reflective material produced the maximum legibility distance at night conditions. It was also seen that while the Type 1 sheeting material performed well during day time, it failed to produce good results during night time. In fact it ended up as the worst performing sheeting material during night time. Based on these observations, it is recommended to use the Clearview 5-W-R in combination with Type 4 retro-reflective sheeting as it showed the most consistent performance compared to all other combinations of fonts and DG3 or Type 1 retro-reflective material.

I följande essä kommer jag, med ensamheten som tematisk ledstjärna, att fördjupa mig i mitt pågående projekt Ett teckens signalement som filmades i Israel och Palestina under våren och sommaren 2013. En essäfilm som mycket väl representerar mitt sätt att arbeta med ett slags slumpmässigt framväxande narrativ, där en vag förnimmelse om vad jag vill åstadkomma i lätt planlös manér leder mig runt på en främmande plats. Jag kommer också att sporadiskt beröra mitt tidigare projekt Genom ett sinnes landskap, som är en essäfilm jag slutförde strax innan jag reste iväg. Genomgående i denna essä kommer jag att använda mig av Carlos Castanedas berömda samtal med yagui-indianen don Juan. Ett möjligen något okonventionellt referensmaterial i ett uppsatssammanhang, då denna litteraturs trovärdighet blivit hårt kritiserad. I denna essäs fall ser jag dock inget direkt problem med detta, eftersom jag här inte ämnar granska eller värdera någon sanningshalt över huvud taget. Jag tänker använda mig av Castanedas fältstudier eftersom jag utan tvivel anser dem vara ett mycket matnyttigt material vad gäller att snudda vid det abstrakta begrepp som ensamhet faktiskt visat sig vara, och därtill enligt don Juan hörande fenomen som seende och kontrollerad dårskap, vidare utvecklat till ett slags förnimmelse som jag här benämner livskänslan.

This study investigates the news discourses to find out how deaf people and/or deafness is represented and analyses how the discourses might be affected by or influence common attitudes and prejudices about deaf people and/or deafness. First, however, this study analysed the contents of the news articles quantitatively in order to find frequencies of different news topics with references to deaf people and/or deafness and whether deaf people were allowed to talk or not. After the content analysis, ten articles were selected for the discourse analysis.   The results of the content analysis show that deaf people are represented and allowed to talk in most of the articles, but that hearing people are also represented in a majority of the articles. Most articles are about culture and personalities, but there are also articles about for example sign language and hearing devices. Most deaf people are represented as individuals, but they are also represented as representatives for the deaf and as both individuals and representatives.   The discourse analysis shows that deaf people are represented as a linguistic and cultural minority in both cultural and personal discourses but represented as broken and in need of being fixed for integration in society in medical discourses. In medical discourses, only experts talk about deafness and no deaf people are represented. In other discourses, both deaf and hearing people talk about deaf people, sign language and deaf culture. In some of the discourses, however, it is clear that deaf people are represented from the hearing viewpoint on deafness. There were discursive discrimination of deafness in medical discourses but occurred rarely in other discourses except when the medical view on deafness is present. Deaf people are represented as a minority distinct from the hearing majority in most articles and some of the cultural discourses show attempts to build a bridge between the deaf world and the hearing society. The majority of the discourses point to pluralism as a social practice but some of those discourses also point to inclusion and exclusion as social practices. The medical discourses however point to both assimilation and exclusion as social practices.