Introducing “Find Sign”, a new website which searches multiple different other websites that have Auslan signs recorded in videos. It’s an easy, fast, central location you can go whenever you’re wondering “How do I sign that in Auslan?”
Just type your query in to the box, and find sign will use the Fast Text AI translation system, originally open sourced by Facebook’s translation engineers, to understand the meaning of the words you typed in, and find signs that feature related concepts. Hopefully it’ll find a perfect sign to express your idea with, but if it doesn’t, it should at least find some related ideas if possible, that might be helpful in figuring out how to talk about that topic more vaguely or explain the idea.
But that’s not all. It’s also a community powered search engine. What I mean by that, is you’re all welcome to upload signs to youtube and send the link thru to me, and have it included in the search results, as long as the quality is decent. Things that make for a good submission: Short and to the point, well lit and clear to see, a good description, a good (ideally short) list of english words in the title, accurate use of hashtags to signify which area of australia the sign variation is used in. Submissions from Deaf people, and submissions from people affected by or connected to what the sign is about will be prioritised over overs, e.g. Autistic people are more an authority on the right way to sign Autism. Intersex people are more an authority on the sign for Intersex. People who live in Melbourne are more an authority on signs for areas of Melbourne.
If you’d like to submit some videos, send a message through tumblr and I can give some advice on the best way to do it! Hopefully that works well, but if not, I hope we can all work together constructively to find a better balance. If people are keen, I can also look in to allowing the search engine to include videos posted to Tumblr later, so you don’t have to use youtube if you prefer.
Please, check it out if you’re an Auslan user or interested in learning, consider contributing if you can find signs the search engine doesn’t have that you know.
The site should now be live at https://find.auslan.fyi/
Much love, Admin Phoenix (a Hard of Hearing Autistic person)