Melaka Portuguese (also known as Papiá Cristang) has its roots in the arrival of the Portuguese in Melaka in the16^th Century. The language is still spoken by the descendants of unions between the Portuguese and locals especially in Melaka, but the dwindling number of fluent speakers and the lack of intergenerational transmission has led to this language being classified as one of the many endangered languages in Malaysia (Pillai, Soh, & Kajita, 2014). Several community engagement projects have been undertaken to translate research into efforts to revitalise Melaka Portuguese (Pillai, Phillip, & Soh, 2017). Among the efforts to encourage the use of the language and to assist the teaching of the language by a community member, a Melaka Portuguese-English dictionary in the form of a mobile application, BibePortMal, was developed. In this session I will talk about the rationale and the process of developing the application with community representatives. Some of the challenges in its development will also be discussed along with plans to improve the application.

Pillai, S., Phillip, A., & Soh, W.-Y. (2017). Revitalising Malacca Portuguese Creole. In P. P. Trifonas & T. Aravossitas (Eds.), Handbook of research and practice in heritage language education, Springer international handbooks of education (pp. 801-817). Cham: Springer International Publishing AG.

Pillai, S., Soh, W. Y., & Kajita, A. S. (2014). Family language policy and heritage language maintenance of Malacca Portuguese Creole, Language & Communication. 37, 75-85.

Stefanie Shamila Pillai (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1693-5022) is a Professor at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya (UM). She was previously Deputy Dean (Postgraduate) and Dean of the Faculty. She currently heads the Social Advancement and Happiness Research Cluster at UM. Her main research interests include phonetics, language use in multilingual contexts as well as language documentation and language revitalisation. Her documentation of Melaka Portuguese (MP) is digitally archived at the Endangered Languages Archive (https://www.elararchive.org/dk0123/). She also headed a funded project to develop a mobile application called BibePortMal, a MP-English dictionary. As part of her Newton-funded project with Professor Emeritus Peter K. Austin of SOAS, she organised and conducted trainings on capacity building for language documentation. To highlight and create public awareness about indigenous languages in Malaysia, she co-convened a month-long multi-media exhibition, Voices of the People, in conjunction with IYIL2019 (see https://tinyurl.com/awareindlang. Apart from her academic output, Professor Pillai has also been working with MP community representatives on the development of materials to encourage the use of this endangered language. Apart from the mobile app, these include an audio CD, a course book, and a trilingual children’s illustrated book (see https://youtu.be/w2iJDB__x7w and https://youtu.be/QQXtF3gjnac). She most recently co-edited a book, Selected Research on Orang Asli communities in Malaysia, which features studies on language, education, culture and heritage of indigenous communities in Peninsular Malaysia.