Sign language recognition and translation has been an active research field in the recent years with most approaches using deep neural networks to extract information from sign language data. This work investigates the mostly disregarded approach of using human keypoint estimation from image and video data with OpenPose in combination with transformer network architecture. Firstly, it was shown that it is possible to recognize individual signs (4.5% word error rate (WER)). Continuous sign language recognition though was more error prone (77.3% WER) and sign language translation was not possible using the proposed methods, which might be due to low accuracy scores of human keypoint estimation by OpenPose and accompanying loss of information or insufficient capacities of the used transformer model. Results may improve with the use of datasets containing higher repetition rates of individual signs or focusing more precisely on keypoint extraction of hands.