Development of Bulgarian sign language dictionary to support deaf people in crisis situations

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to present a methodology for developing a Bulgarian sign dictionary for communication during crisis situations. Linguistic data are extracted according to basic lexicographical principles for creation of sign dictionaries relying on observations on real-life usage of the signs. In specially organized seminars with deaf moderators, carried out in the form of free discussion on the Zoom communication platform, deaf people and users of the Bulgarian sign language are provided with the opportunity to communicate without interference from the Bulgarian verbal language. The extracted data are processed manually on the specialized program ELAN to describe all usage variants of the signs on different topics important for the crisis communication. In its final version, the dictionary contains 600 units and it clearly demonstrates that there is no complete correspondence between the vocabulary units of the Bulgarian verbal and the Bulgarian sign language. There are many key concepts related to crisis communication that have no corresponding signs.

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