Diverse Sign Language Translation

Abstract Like spoken languages, a single sign language expression could correspond to multiple valid textual interpretations. Hence, learning a rigid one-to-one mapping for sign language translation (SLT) models might be inadequate, particularly in the case of limited data. In this work, we introduce a Diverse Sign Language Translation (DivSLT) task, aiming to generate diverse yet accurate translations for sign language videos. Firstly, we employ large language models (LLM) to generate multiple references for the widely-used CSL-Daily and PHOENIX14T SLT datasets. Here, native speakers are only invited to touch up inaccurate references, thus significantly improving the annotation efficiency. Secondly, we provide a benchmark model to spur research in this task. Specifically, we investigate multi-reference training strategies enabling our DivSLT model to achieve diverse translations. Then, to enhance translation accuracy, we employ the max-reward-driven reinforcement learning objective that maximizes the reward of the translated result. Additionally, we utilize multiple metrics to assess the accuracy, diversity, and semantic precision of the DivSLT task. Experimental results on the enriched datasets demonstrate that our DivSLT method achieves not only better translation performance but also diverse translation results.