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23 September 2023, Saturday Ankara, TÜRKİYE

More than 4.5 Million Person Has Accessed to the Current Turkish Sign Language Dictionary


The Current Turkish Sign Language (TİD) Dictionary prepared by the Ministry of Family and Social Services for those wishing to learn Turkish sign language, students studying in schools for persons with hearing impairments, and educators teaching Turkish sign language has been accessed more than 4.5 million times across 150 countries.

The Current Turkish Sign Language Dictionary, which made available to users by the Ministry in 2017 at https://tidsozluk.aile.gov.tr/, is based on the Turkish Sign Language corpus obtained by 113 native speakers of Turkish Sign Language from 26 provinces in Türkiye.

The contents of the dictionary, which is designed as a video-based online environment, are presented in Turkish Sign Language and Turkish. The user audience of the dictionary includes students with hearing impairments, those wishing to learn Turkish sign language, interpreters, special education teachers and researchers.
The dictionary, consisting of 2.000 words with the highest frequency of use within the framework of the data collected as part of the Turkish Sign Language Research Project conducted in 2015, included a total of 11.428 videos prepared with three different types: sign, meaning and example, and different background colors according to their types.

It is aimed that the transcription and Turkish translation of all the words in the videos will contribute to the Turkish language learning of the persons with hearing disabilities and to the Turkish Sign Language education of the persons without hearing disabilities. The dictionary, which also has an English translation, has been accessed by more than 4.5 million users from 150 countries since 2017.

The users can find the sign the user wants to learn through Turkish words or visual features of the sign. With the option to play videos at different speeds, it is aimed to provide convenience for Turkish Sign Language students. With the help of example videos, the users learn about the usage of the word in a sentence.