Symbol Dragoman is a symbol-based communication tool that generates grammatically correct sentences in both English and Arabic from symbols selected by the user. It uses different methods for each language - for English it searches a corpus of sentences, and for Arabic it uses a rule-based system inspired by subsumption architecture. The tool is responsive and works on both left-to-right and right-to-left text directions. It aims to help those with limited language skills communicate in multiple languages using symbols.

1. Symbol Dragoman
Nawar Halabi, Chaohai Ding, Yunjia Li, Lama Al-Zaben
developing with Alaa Mashat, Fadwa M.Al Rowais and Kewalin
Angkananon
Mentors: Dr Mike Wald and E.A. Draffan
WAIS Research Group

2. Present Situation
Pictograms / symbols are used by those who
cannot speak or have poor language skills.
Symbols can also be used to provide literacy
skill support but they can be ambiguous in
terms of their meaning.
Example of Bliss symbols

3. Example of a Communication
Aid with symbols and words
Words are often placed below or above the
symbols - question and answer sessions can
often reveal what is/was actually meant in a
conversation.
http://www.assistiveware.com/product/proloquo2go

4. Multilingual situation
 English
 Put on the coat
 Arabic
 Dress the coat –
female‫المعطف‬ ‫ألبسي‬
 Dress the coat –
male‫المعطف‬ ‫ألبس‬
Need to think about the morphology – where the building
blocks of a language change the make up of words
Making choices regarding the number and type of symbols
offered to suit individual skills and abilities.
Where the user, parents, carers, therapists and teachers speak
different languages here

5. Systems already available
Those that allow
symbol to word translation without
grammatical corrections – Grid Player
single word/multiword to symbol
translation – Widgit Point
sentence creation when swiping across a
symbol set – Symbol Path Android app
symbol to quick phrase/sentence selection
with machine translation

6. Requirements
A system that will allow Arabic symbol users
to work in both languages with the symbols
and words appearing from right to left for
Arabic and left to right for English
A system that works out what will possibly be
the meaning of a collection of symbols
chosen by the user in any order
Grammatically correct sentences / phrases
presented in two languages.

7. Development Process -
Sentence Generation
 Two methods were used one for English and one for Arabic
with TATOEBA.
 English: Using a large corpus of sentences taken from
http://www.manythings.org/anki/ .... Indexed by elastic
search (http://www.elasticsearch.org/) and we look for it
by keywords
 Arabic: Added a rule-based generator inspired by the
Subsumption architecture

8. Development Process –
English sentence Generation

9. Development Process –
Arabic Sentence Generation
Subsumption Architecture
http://cs.brown.edu/~tld/courses/cs148/02/architectures.html

10. Sample screenshots
Home Page

11. Responsive Design
 Symbol Dragoman
http://symbolmanager.ecs.soton.ac.u
k:8080/
 Further Information:
https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/events/s
s12
 Code Available from BitBucket
https://bitbucket.org/nhalabi/symbol
-dragoman

12. Acknowledgements
Symbols from ARASAAC http://www.catedu.es/arasaac/index.php
Other icons from the Noun Project http://thenounproject.com/
Creative Commons – Attribution (CC BY 3.0)
Speak designed by Mister Pixel from the Noun Project
Refresh designed by Jardson A. from the Noun Project
House designed by John Caserta from the Noun Project
People designed by useiconic.com from the Noun Project
Animals designed by Pete Fecteau from the Noun Project
School designed by Mike Wirth from the Noun Project
Food designed by Johannes Ben Jurca from the Noun Project
Clothes designed by Daniel Hanly from the Noun Project
Time designed by Wayne Middleton from the Noun Project
Paint Brush designed by Björn Andersson from the Noun Project
Emotion Dice designed by Martin Vanco from the Noun Project
Playing designed by jon trillana from the Noun Project
Thank you to all those who participated along
the way.