NEWS: ICT to preserve indigenous traditional knowledge

KUCHING: Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud wants the traditional knowledge of the state’s nearly 30 ethnic groups to be preserved through the use of information and communication technology (ICT).

He said many of these ethnic groups passed down knowledge orally from one generation to the next, through stories and songs for example.

“There is much to be learnt from these communities, the knowledge they have on health, history and way of life,” he said in a speech to open the sixth international conference on information technology in Asia at Kuching Hilton Tuesday.

Taib’s text of speech was read by his deputy Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam.

Taib urged Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), which organised the four-day conference, and other research institutions to identify ways in which ICT could be used to preserve traditional knowledge.

“There is a need, for example, to enhance speech-recognition technologies to speed up the process of converting speech to text so that the text can be stored and analysed.”

He said machine translation software, which Unimas was doing research on, should be developed for local languages.

The move, he added, would enable indigenous languages to be translated to English.

Taib commended Unimas for its successful e-Bario project, which enabled students and villagers in the Kelabit highland in northern Sarawak to connect to the world through ICT telecentres.

He said as the state was still short of competent and skilled IT and engineering professionals, Unimas could play a vital role in human resource development programmes.

“Unimas will be at the heart of the state’s Multimedia Super Corridor activities, particularly looking at the incubation facilities for technology startups and in addressing the state’s human resource development needs.

“This would assist very much in the Sarawak Corridor for Renewable Energy project which aims to create 1.6 million jobs with 10 social and commercial sectors to be opened up,” said Taib.