International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol. 10, No. 5, October 2020, pp. 5227~5234 ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v10i5.pp5227-5234  5226 Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com/index.php/IJECE Application for Iraqi sign language translation on Android system Miaad Ahmed Alobaidy, Sundus Khaleel Ebraheem Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Mosul, Iraq Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Feb 9, 2020 Revised Apr 13, 2020 Accepted Apr 25, 2020 Deaf people suffer from difficulty in social communication, especially those who have been denied the blessing of hearing before the acquisition of spoken language and before learning to read and write. For the purpose of employing mobile devices for the benefit of these people, their teachers and everyone who has contact with them, this research aims to design an application for social communication and learning by translating Iraqi sign language into text in Arabic and vice versa. Iraqi sign language has been chosen because of a lack of applications for this field. The current research, to the best of our knowledge, is the first of its kind in Iraq. The application is open source; words that are not found in the application database can be processed by translating them into letters alphabetically. The importance of the application lies in the fact that it is a means of communication and e-learning through Iraqi sign language, reading and writing in Arabic. Similarly, it is regarded as a means of social communication between deaf people and those with normal hearing. This application is designed by using JAVA language and it was tested on several deaf students at Al-Amal Institute for Special Needs Care in Mosul, Iraq. It was well comprehended and accepted. Keywords: Deaf person Machine translation Mobile application Sign language 3D avatar Copyright © 2020 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Miaad Ahmed Alobaidy, Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq. Email: mayadaalobaidy@uomosul.edu.iq 1. INTRODUCTION It is in human nature to seek to help others in ways possible according to abilities, expertise and knowledge. Similar to how medical experts have an important role in treating patients, and medical engineers in manufacturing tools and instruments to help the sick and injured, such as the manufacture of prostheses for the handicapped and headphones for the hearing impaired, there is also a major role for the programmer in creating and developing applications and technologies to help people with special needs and in order to make their lives easier. The role of the programmer lies in creating and developing applications and technologies to help deaf people to communicate with each other, as well as with people with normal hearing, in addition to facilitating their education. Undoubtedly, that the deaf constitute a large and influential percentage in society, but they suffer from the difficulty of communication. Sign language, as a means of communication, has been developed over thousands of years. It is defined as movements using one or both hands and sometimes using facial expressions [1]. With the invention of the Internet and the development of technology, the deaf have had a share in benefiting from this technology represented by providing means to educate and communicate. This issue has become an important area that has attracted the attention of many scientists and researchers working in this field.