Photo: Royal Academy of Engineering
A Kenyan entrepreneur who designed an app that translates speech into sign language has won the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. Elly Savatia’s Terp 360 uses 3D avatars to provide sign language translations from speech in real time, allowing users to communicate without relying on human interpreters. It was developed in conjunction with deaf and hard-of-hearing Kenyans to record over 2,300 signs, including commonly used phrases and words. Motion sensors were attached to the hands of a signer, capturing the movements of their hands in space. Terp 360 currently translates from English and Swahili into Kenyan Sign Language and is on track to support Rwandan, Ugandan, South African, British and American sign languages by mid-2027. The developers plan to partner with local NGOs and projects that have visual sign language data sets, as well as news stations with several years’ worth of sign language video, and have set up a motion capture studio in Nairobi, able to record and learn 1,000 words a day.
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