Revitalizing Mandailing through Technology: Designing an AI-Based Trilingual Digital Dictionary
Keywords:
Mandailing, artificial intelligence, language preservation, digital dictionary, R&DAbstract
Bahasa Mandailing is facing a serious threat from globalization, and the major language is starving its development. As a low-resource language, preservation efforts are still limited and have not yet used digital technology systematically. On the other hand, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) opens new opportunities in documenting and revitalizing minority languages. This study aims to develop a trilingual digital dictionary (Mandailing–Indonesian–English) as a strategic effort to preserve Mandailing while simultaneously providing theoretical contributions to linguistic studies and technological applications. The research method uses a Research and Development (R&D) approach with the ADDI (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation) model. The research process includes needs analysis, dictionary entry structure design, development of a React Native/Flutter-based application prototype, and limited trials involving native speakers and university students. The study results produced an application prototype with a three-way search feature, contextual sentence examples, and systematic dictionary entries. A total of 200 basic Mandailing vocabulary words were successfully collected as an initial corpus. The trials showed that the application is easy to use, although further development is needed in the form of vocabulary expansion and the addition of audio features. These findings suggest that creating an AI trilingual digital dictionary could be vital for preserving the Mandailing language. In addition to providing a practical learning tool, this initiative promotes digital literacy, strengthens the transmission of knowledge across generations, and serves as a foundation for research and technological innovation in linguistics.
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