MOHE TAKES KEY STEPS TO SAFEGUARD BAHASA MELAYU’S POSITION IN DIGITAL ERA

SHAH ALAM, Oct 9 (Bernama) -- The Ministry of Higher Education (MOH), through the Action Plan to Uphold Bahasa Melayu 2023-2030, is implementing key measures to safeguard the national language’s position amid technological developments.

Its Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir said one of the measures involved developing a national Bahasa Melayu digital corpus to compile Malay texts, terms, and phrases for inclusion in artificial intelligence (AI) systems and machine learning engines.

He said that collaboration between universities and the local AI industry to produce language models, as well as digital applications capable of understanding the Malay language context, is also being carried out.

“In addition, we are establishing language and AI centres at selected Public Higher Education Institutions (IPTA) to promote technology-based linguistic research, including syntax, semantics and natural language processing or NLP.

“(Other measures include) strengthening the Malay language e-learning policy through the integration of language models into smart learning platforms and the higher education metaverse,” he said in his speech at the National Level 152 Convention here today.

Also present were Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Shahrin Sahib.

Zambry said that the Malay language faces three main challenges following the wave of the AI revolution, including the lack of linguistic data and large corpora, the dominance of global languages such as English and Mandarin, and the use of bahasa rojak (a mixture of Bahasa Melayu and other languages) on social media.

He said these challenges would cause AI systems, such as chatbots, large language models (LLMs) and automatic translation tools, to lack an understanding of the Malay language context, in addition to the use of short forms that could lead to structural and grammatical deterioration in the digital space.

“It is hoped that with these steps, the Malay language will no longer be just a heritage language but a language of the future, a language that can stand in the global digital space with dignity and its own beauty,” he said.

--BERNAMA