The blog is updated on May 26, 2009 as the following:
1) One of the speakers is unable to make time to come and therefore, the programme schedule has to be amended.
2) Profile of the speakers available.
3) Abstracts of the papers are available.
4) Registration is now closed.
International Seminar on Sign Language Research
Theme: “Towards Deaf Empowerment through Sign Language Research”
One of the central goals of research on sign language (SL) is the provision of new and relevant ideas which contribute towards empowering the Deaf community and building an equal platform for the promotion of their culture and the fulfillment of their needs in key areas such as education and employment.
The seminar sets the stage for academics, researchers, and leaders of the Deaf community to discuss issues in SL research with international speakers and researchers reporting on sign language research in each of their respective countries. The intended outcome of this sharing will be a more comprehensive understanding of the nature, development, and future prospects of the field.
Participation fee : RM 100
Deaf/ Students (Local) : RM 50
Organised by: MySL Research Team, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya
Date: 30th and 31st May 2009 (Sat & Sun)
Venue: Conference Hall, University of Malaya
For more information & registration, please contact:
Assoc. Professor Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell (Seminar Director)
c/o Secretariat Mdm Noor Haifa Mohd Yunus
Tel No: +603-79673065
Fax No: +603-79579707
Email: nhaifa@um.edu.my
The logo is finalised at last!
Please download the brochure and fill the necessary detail and return it to us with the cheque/cash!
Thanks for your support.
The programme schedule of the Seminar is amended on May 26 and now it is available now. Please have a look at the schedule.
30 May 2009 (Saturday)
| Time | Programme
|
| 8.30 am | Registration |
| 9.00 am | Welcome addresses – Professor Dr Azirah Hashim, Dean, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya.
|
| 9.15 am
|
Official opening of Seminar – Toh Puan Dato’ Seri Dr Aishah Ong, Pro-Chancellor, University of Malaya.
|
| 9.30 am
|
Coffee break
|
| 10.00 am
|
Session 1 (Keynote): “Deaf Empowerment through Sign Language Research: Malaysian perspectives” – Associate Professor Dr. Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell and Ms. Ho Koon Wei, University of Malaya.
|
| 11.00 am
|
Session 2: “Sign Language Research and Development in Hong Kong” – Dr. Felix Sze, Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, Hong Kong.
|
| 12.00 pm
|
Session 3: “Sign Language research for and by the Deaf – Overcoming challenges in the Philippines” – Dr. Liza Martinez, Philippine Deaf Resource Centre, The Philippines.
|
| 1.00 pm
|
Lunch
|
| 2.15 pm
|
Session 4: “Recognising the language of the deaf community:
the concepts of communication, language, speech, signing and their relationship with the means of communication used by deaf people” – Dr. Abdullah Yusoff and Rabiaah Mohamed, Department of Special Education, Institute of Teacher Education Malaysia.
|
| 3.15 pm
|
Session 5: “Linguistics and Sign Language Interpreting” – Professor Roger T. Bell, formerly Professor of Linguistics, University of Westminster, London.
|
| 4.15 pm
|
Tea
|
31 May 2009 (Sunday)
| Time | Programme |
| 8.30 | Breakfast |
| 9.00 am | Session 6: “Deaf Pride” – Jessica Mak. SIGN IT., Singapore |
| 10.00 am | Session 7: “’Developing CSL and the Deaf Community in Cambodia” – Rev. Charles Dittmeier, Deaf Development Programme, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. |
| 11.00 am | Session 8: “Dictionary of Malaysian Sign Language: a preliminary study” – Dr Ibrahim Ahmad and Mr. Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim, University of Malaya. |
| 12.00 pm | Lunch |
| 2.00 pm | Plenary Session
Moderator: Professor Roger T. Bell Panel members: 1. Dr. Abdullah Yusoff 2. Dr. Felix Sze 3. Dr. Liza Martinez 4. Mr Rahim M. Yassim 5. Ms Jessica Mak 6. Rev Charles Deittmeier 7. Ms. Ho Koon Wei / Dr. Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell |
| 4.00 pm | Closing by Dean, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics
Tea Photo Session |
| 5.00 pm | Adjourn |
There are two main entrances - from PJ and KL
We are at the building #10 in the map – Faculty of Languages and Linguistics.
You will be led to the seminar place.
See you all there!
In Malaysia, sign language has often been regarded as a restricted method of communication and not a language ‘spoken’ by the Deaf. Such a perception has made the Malaysian Sign Language (MySL) sidelined and unrecognised as a language in its own right.
Deaf Malaysians, are becoming more aware of their language heritage and the crucial need to raise the status of the language by securing its recognition and description as a coherent sophisticated system: a “full” language in its own right. The challenge is made greater by the existence of (1) considerable variation within the language (both regional dialects and non-native usage on the part of some teachers), and (2) by the lack of a scientifically based Sign Language Dictionary for MySL. This situation does not help to advance the Deaf development in education.
It is against this background that the research project in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics on MySL was started in 2007. The aims of the project are:
(a) to establish the unique formal structures and functional conventions of MySL, on a par with sign language in advanced countries.
(b) to create a MySL dictionary compatible with the Asian Sign Language Dictionary currently being produced in the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Cambodia.
The team includes three internationally qualified members, a Deaf linguist working on SL linguistics, an SL language interpreter and a highly experienced academic acting as Consultant in Linguistics.
The project has clear significance both in terms of the discovery and systematisation of knowledge and and as a contribution to the development of human resources for Malaysian society in general, and the Malaysian Deaf community, in particular.
Deaf Empowerment through Sign Language Research:
Malaysian perspectives
Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell & Ho Koon Wei
University of Malaya
The focus of this seminar is the deaf community in Malaysia and the role that ongoing research in sign language can play in empowering deaf people. The registered number of the Deaf in Malaysia is just over 27,000: one in every thousand of all Malaysians. Education for the Deaf in Malaysia has a short history, and much of the debate on the ‘official’ means of communication is still going on.
Organised and adequately funded research in the field is lacking, and much more needs to be done to ensure that the language of the Deaf in Malaysia has the capability of bringing them to a higher level of achievement in terms of both education and employment. This raises the issue of what “language” is and whether sign language is a language in its own right, and what should be done in Malaysia to make Malaysian sign language a ‘full’ language that is capable of empowering its users.
This paper has a dual purpose:
(1) to clarify the meaning of the term “deaf” and specify the nature of “empowerment” in the context of the deaf community in Malaysia and
(2) to outline the parameters for research into signed language, report on the present state of research on Malaysian Sign Language (MySL) and to illustrate the data collection and analysis stage through the use of the E-LAN (the Eudico Linguistic Annotator) developed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
The goals of the Malaysian research project are to start the effort of describing the Malaysian sign language and to create a linguistic dictionary as a research tool and a source for both the hearing and the Deaf.
In the longer term it is hoped that this paper will contribute to the essential consciousness raising among the hearing community – including those in academia – required for the improvement of the lives of deaf people through the continuation of research into their communication systems and culture.
Sign Language Research and Development in Hong Kong
Dr. Felix Sze
Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies,
Chinese University of Hong Kong
The study of sign language has a young history of around 40 years, and has proven itself to be an extremely fruitful arena for researchers across different academic disciplines to test scientific theories that were previously based only on spoken languages. While the impact of sign linguistics has led to significant breakthroughs in deaf education as well as deaf livelihood in the western countries, sign language research in Asia remains at its infancy. It is not uncommon to see the role of sign language to deaf people and deaf development being undervalued or ignored in different sectors of the communities.
Sign linguistics research began in the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 1990s. Throughout the past two decades, research work and training in CUHK has been guided chiefly by the philosophy that sign language research, apart from its immediate value as a scientific inquiry, should also benefit the deaf community and empower deaf people in the long run. At present, the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS) at CUHK are hosting a number of sign language research projects which involve the participation of both hearing and deaf researchers. The sign language/bilingual acquisition research at CSLDS aims partly at resolving a long-standing problem that hinders academic attainment of deaf people – lack of exposure to a full language, spoken or signed, at an early age to trigger language acquisition. In face of the global prevalence of inclusive education over the segregation mode in deaf education, the Jockey Club Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrollment in Deaf Education Program explores the role of sign language in educating deaf children in a mainstream setting. The Asia-Pacific Sign Linguistics Research and Training Program funded by the Nippon Foundation has the goal of empowering deaf people by developing the sign linguistics disciplines in the region and training up deaf and hearing sign language researchers. It is hoped that the research output generated by these projects can not only shed light on the direction of deaf education but also help advance the social status of the deaf population in the near future.
Sign language research for and by the Deaf –
Overcoming challenges in the Philippines”
Dr. Liza B. Martinez
Philippine Deaf Resource Center
www.phildeafres.org
Signing has been documented in the Philippines as early as the 1590s in the Eastern Visayan island of Leyte. However, research on this visual language of the Filipino Deaf Community only began in the 1990s (Martinez 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996). Since that time, and with landmark publications describing the structure and use of Filipino Sign Language (or FSL), there has been a significant increase in contributions by local Deaf and hearing researchers.
Important research includes the pioneering linguistics reference An Introduction to Filipino Sign Language by the Philippine Deaf Resource Center and the Philippine Federation of the Deaf (2004), and the Status Report on the Use of Sign Language in the Philippines by the National Sign Language Committee (PFD, 2008). Recently as well, the Philippine Federation of the Deaf participated in two trailblazing projects: Practical Dictionaries for Asian-Pacific Sign Languages, and the Development of an Online Philippine Corpus.
Aspects of the use of FSL have also been investigated in application in several fields: reproductive health (Iyer, Fortunato and Martinez), computer science (Cabalfin and Martinez 2008, Martinez and Cabalfin 2008), visual literature (Tiongson and Martinez, 2008a,b) human rights (Corpuz, Mendoza and Martinez 2008; Benjamin and Martinez 2008), and access to the legal and judicial systems (Tiongson and Martinez, 2007).
Filipino Deaf researchers themselves recognize the importance of their participation in such studies. Though they see limitations such as training and advanced education, they view research on Filipino Sign Language as critical to many of the advocacies in the Deaf community. They envision continuing partnerships with hearing researchers and hearing institutions as essential to deepen understanding of their language.
Different challenges continue to face researchers and stakeholders in the Deaf community for such research efforts. Among these are technical difficulties, geography, financing and economic concerns, language variation, and language issues and attitudes. Varying levels of awareness about the Deaf and sign language among policy-making or implementing agencies complicate the situation. However, important lessons in networking, collaboration or partnerships along with a clear understanding of the environment and needs of the Deaf community have been beneficial in addressing these challenges.
Recognising Language of The Deaf Community:
The Concepts of Communication, Language, Speech, Signing and their Relationship with the Means of Communication Used by Deaf People
Dr Abdullah Yusoff & Rabiaah Mohamed
The issue relating to the medium of communication used by the deaf community is not just a national issue but has been widely debated among scholars at the international level. However, there have only recently been heightened discussions on the issue when the Deaf Sign Language is given recognition and used as a medium of teaching in the education setting. Some countries go as far as recognizing the Deaf Sign Language as an official national language where it is used in every sector involving deaf people. Pursuant to this, this paper, which applies retrospectively, discusses the concept of communication, language, speech and signing which directly relate to the mode of communication use by the deaf community.
Specifically, the discussion is based on the following eight questions:
(1) Are the deaf community a handicapped community or a language minority group?
(2) What is the status of the deaf community in Malaysia?
(3) What are defined as communication and language?
(4) What is defined as speech and what pattern of speech is produced by deaf people?
(5) Can we recognize signing used by deaf people as a true language?
(6) Does signing used by deaf people have the same status as that of the body language and gestures used by other society groups?
(7) What is the relationship between communication, language, speech and gestures with the means of communication used by deaf people?
(8) What is the benefit which may be gained by deaf people should their signing is recognized as a true language just like speech?
(9) Which countries have recognized signing of the deaf as a true language and how do they do it?
An understanding of the above is important in order to make a comparison as well as to identify the distinctions and relations between the modes of communication used by normal hearing society and deaf people. Consequently, this will give answers to the questions on the status of the signing used by deaf people i.e. whether it can be considered as a true language, and are the deaf people considered as a handicapped group or a language minority group.
Linguistics and Sign Language Interpreting
Roger T Bell
Professor of Linguistics (retired)
School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Languages
University of Westminster
London
We all live immersed in signs – natural and constructed – and modern linguistics (from de Saussure in the early years of the last century on) has unquestioningly taken as axiomatic that language is a system of signs.
How paradoxical, then, that signed language should, until very recently, have been at best ignored or, at worst, specifically excluded from the discipline as a field of legitimate study. Indeed, the history of linguistics over the past hundred years has, in the main, been one of steady reductionism with the focus progressively narrowing not only to speech (rather than other language systems) but to a highly abstract definition of language as idealised knowledge divorced from context and use and even from meaning.
Such an orientation necessarily leaves the communication systems of the Deaf outside the academic mainstream and, as will be argued here, further cuts deaf communities off from the potentially helpful insights of linguistic research – theoretical and applied – and, equally, denies linguists the opportunity to set spoken and signed language side by side in ways which illuminate the formal and functional characteristics of both.
The purpose of this paper is not to go back over this history but to consider, at least in outline, the role linguistics can play in fundamental research in Deaf Studies and in applications such as signed language interpreting and interpreter education.
Deaf Pride
Jessica Mak
jmakwe@yahoo.com
What is Deaf pride? How can one be possibly proud to be a Deaf person? What are the continuing issues that affect our Deaf Community and how do we instill a sense of belonging and pride among ourselves and the future generation of Deaf children. How can we be proud of own culture, language and many things that affect us? How do we bridge the communication gap and connect with the Hearing. These are some of the questions that I will address in my presentation.
The education and sign language activities of the Deaf Development Programme for the mostly young deaf adults are providing interesting and exciting learning for the deaf students, their parents and families, their teachers, and the disability sector. A new vision and new possibilities for deaf people are being created.
Development of Sign Language
and the Deaf Community in Cambodia
Charles Dittmeier
Cambodia may be unique in the way sign language and the deaf community have developed there. There is no knowledge of any formal sign language in the country before 1997 or of any schools for deaf children or organizations for deaf people before that time.
It is estimated that there are about 50,000 deaf people and about 500,000 hard-of-hearing people in Cambodia. The two NGOs currently working with deafness are in touch with less than 2,000 of these deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Because of the lack of sign language, schools, and organizations, there is also little sense of deaf identity and of deaf community among the deaf population. There is little understanding of deafness on the part of society and even by deaf people themselves and their families. Probably 95% of the deaf people have never met another deaf person and could not communicate if they did. The lack of language impedes the development of the deaf community and the lack of community is an obstacle in the development of sign language.
No deaf child has yet graduated from high school in Cambodia. There are no known educated deaf adults. The Deaf Development Programme works with the older deaf persons who are not in the deaf schools, teaching them sign language, literacy, simple mathematics, and life skills in a two-year non-formal education program. The Nippon Foundation is supporting research into Cambodian Sign Language.
Dictionary of Malaysian Sign Language: a preliminary study
Dr Ibrahim Ahmad
&
Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim
University of Malaya
The standard approach to starting to understand a new language and its culture has always been to create a dictionary which lists and translates its lexicon and, often, provides an outline of its grammar and, less frequently, aspects of the use of the language: typically in terms of levels of formality and associated forms of address.
A comprehensive dictionary of Malaysian Sign Language (MySL) is currently being prepared and it is the focus of this paper to examine four available books on sign language published by Malaysia Federation of Deaf (MFD) and ask to what extent these books have the characteristics of a dictionary of sign language.
The conclusion of the investigation is that they do, indeed, possess a number of the necessary characteristics and can be considered to represent an early stage of dictionary making that can be drawn upon and developed more comprehensively later.
Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell
Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia.
Her interests cover much of the general field of translation and interpreting (English-Malay: Malay-English), including translator and interpreter education (e.g. for the National Institute of Translation and for the Legal & Judicial Training Department) and the evaluation of training programmes e.g. Interpreting Asia Interpreting Europe an EU-funded project on liaison interpreter training (English-Chinese-Vietnamese) 2006. Increasingly, since the completion of her doctoral research on legal interpreting (Court Interpreting in Malaysia in Relation to Language Policy and Planning, 2002), she has become involved in the provision of language services to the Deaf community in Malaysia and in the design of a common core training programme for spoken and signed language interpreters.
Her publications range from articles on court interpreter training and ethics, and the translation of travel literature, through editing and reviewing, to the production of multimedia EFL materials and technical translation from English to Malay and literary translations, in both directions. She is a member of the editorial board of Translation Watch Quarterly and currently heads a research project on Malaysian Sign Language with funding from the Ministry of Higher Education and the University of Malaya.
Ms Ho Koon Wei
Ms. Ho Koon Wei has been involved with the Deaf Community for the past 20 years. She has worked for the Pusat Majudiri ‘Y’, YMCA Kuala Lumpur and then the Majudiri ‘Y’ Foundation for the Deaf for seven years.
She has an M.A. in Linguistics from Gallaudet University, Washington, making her the first Deaf Linguist in Malaysia. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Deaf Studies, Mathematics and Computer Science from the same university. She is listed in the “Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges”. She is also the recipient of the award: “National Dean’s List”, “President’s Cum Laude Scholars” and “Dean List”.
Due to her contribution to the Malaysian Deaf Community, she was awarded the “Dignifying a Profession Award” by the Rotary Club of Petaling Jaya. She was invited to be one of the facilitators for a Workshop on Disability at the 12th YMCA World Council meeting held in Korea 1990. She also presented a research paper on “Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia – Syntax” at the 30th Anniversary International Conference: Language, Linguistics and the Real World, held in Kuala Lumpur in 2002.
She is currently pursuing her PhD in the University of Malaya on Malaysian Sign language, while at the same time being an active member of the Malaysian Sign Language Research Project since its inception in 2007.
Dr Felix Sze
Dr. Felix Sze completed her M.Phil degree in the Department of Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2000. Her M.Phil thesis, Space and Nominals in Hong Kong Sign Language, was the first academic thesis on the linguistic properties of Hong Kong Sign Language. She later obtained her Ph.D degree from the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, in 2008 and the title of her dissertation was Topic Constructions in Hong Kong Sign Language. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS), CUHK.
In addition to providing sign linguistic training to undergraduate and post-graduate hearing students at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, CUHK, Dr. Felix Sze is also one of the sign linguists running the Asia-Pacific Sign Linguistics Research and Training Program funded by the Nippon Foundation at CSLDS. Her main duty is to provide sign linguistic training to the deaf trainees and hearing research students from the participating Asia-Pacific countries and setting up research projects in relation to the sign languages in the region.
Her research interests include information structure, non-manual signals, sign language typology and sign language acquisition.
Dr Liza B. Martinez
Dr. Liza B. Martinez is Founder and Director of the research NGO, the Philippine Deaf Resource Center, Inc. She is one of only two hearing sign linguists in the Philippines and the only one actively involved in sign linguistics and deaf research. She trained at the renowned Deaf institution, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.).
She has held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in academic institutions and programs for the Deaf at home and abroad: Gallaudet University, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (New York, U.S.A.) and the De La Salle University (College of St. Benilde). In addition, she has been a faculty member of De La Salle University, Manila; the University of the Philippines; and Ateneo de Manila University.
She has lectured extensively on sign language linguistics throughout the Philippines sincen1995 and has also been an invited resource speaker on sign language in Japan and Malaysia.
She has several publications on sign linguistics and sign language research locally and abroad, is the primary contributor to the pioneering linguistic series “An Introduction to Filipino Sign Language”, and project leader for major advocacy projects such as “Equal access to communication for the deaf in legal proceedings”.
She has maintained involvement in various grassroots Deaf organizations such as the Philippine Federation of the Deaf, the Filipino Deaf Women’s Health and Crisis Center, Support and Empower Abused Deaf Children, Filipino Deaf Visual Art Group and Dulaang Tahimik Pilipinas (Silent Theater Philippines).
Roger T Bell
Roger Bell has been involved in applied linguistics – language teaching, translation studies and translator and interpreter education – since the early 1960s at the Universities of Lancaster (1965-1983), Westminster (1984-1994), Karachi (1971), Brasília (1995), and the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur (1998-99) and Fairview International School (Director: 2002-present).
Before his retirement, he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Westminster in the UK and is currently a Visiting Professor there and at the University of North Sumatra, Indonesia. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (London).
His publications (5 books and some 70 papers) span sociolinguistics (language variation; bilingualism and multilingualism) and applied linguistics (language teaching; translation and interpreting theory) and educational development (academic and business).
His 1991 book Translation and translating: theory and practice has been translated into Romanian (2000), Korean (2001), Chinese (2005) with Russian and Malay translations in the press and plans for a Hindi version in the near future.
He has also acted as a consultant to a wide range of organisations including the Nuffield Foundation on the Interpreter Project (1991-1995), which led to the creation of the UK National Register of Public Service Interpreters and, since 2002, to the National Institute for Translation and Interpreting Malaysia (ITNM) on strategic planning, quality assurance and practitioner training and currently as linguistic consultant to the UM SL research project.
Currently he runs workshops on presentation and facilitation skills, and the application of this to tertiary-level pedagogic skill development for academic staff: lectures, seminars, tutorials/coaching and conference presentation techniques through his company RZ Language Link Sdn. Bhd.
Dr Ibrahim Haji Ahmad
Dr Ibrahim Haji Ahmad obtained his doctorate degree in Malay lexicography from the University of Malaya and is a dictionary compiler and researcher. He has compiled several dictionaries in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) Kuala Lumpur where he worked as an editor of Kamus Dewan. He was also appointed as the expert dictionary compiler for DBP Brunei Darussalam to produce the Kamus Bahasa Melayu Nusantara (published 2003). He has written extensively on dictionary compilation including a book entitled Perkamusan Melayu: Teori dan Praktis. In 2007, he was awarded Hadiah Karya Ilmiah (Bahasa) by DBP. In September 2007, he joined University of Malaya as a member of academic staff in the Malay Language Department, Academy of Malay Studies.
Mr Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim
Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim has a Master’s degree in Modern Language Studies and is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics specialising in the field of Language and Speech Pathology. He worked as medical assistant in the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital prior to joining the University of Malaya. He is a member of the Sign Language research team and the Language and Communication Disabilities Research Cluster in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics.
Dr. Abdullah bin Yusoff
Dr Abdullah bin Yusoff received his first degree from the Universiti Putra Malaysia and later his Master’s from the University of Malaya. He obtained a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He has been involved in teaching the Deaf since 1983 and has also attended short courses on management of the disabled in Japan. Dr Abdullah has also worked as an administrator in the Department of Special Education at the Ministry of Education. In addition, while in New Zealand, he worked with a NGO dealing with people with learning disability. At present he is the Head of the Special Education Department at Malaysian Teachers Education Institute in Kota Bharu, Kelantan and education advisor for the Deaf Association in Kelantan. He is actively involved in writing on language education for the Deaf.
Che Rabiaah binti Mohamed
Che Rabiaah binti Mohamed began a career as a nurse at Kubang Krian USM Hospital after completing a basic course in Nursing from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. She obtained her first degree in Nursing Science at UM and hence developed an interest in Human Communication Disorders. She then went on to gain a Master’s degree in Modern Languages. Currently, she is completing her PhD research at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in the field of stroke patients. She has a wide experience as a nurse and presently is a senior lecturer in Nursing Science at the School of Health Science in Health Campus, Kubang Krian, Kelantan.
Rev. Charles Dittmeier
Charles Dittmeier is the director of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme (DDP) in Cambodia. He has worked with the deaf community since 1969, first working with the Catholic deaf community, and as a deaf program director and a sign language interpreter in the United States, and then serving as a resource person for moral education at the Technical Training Centre for the Deaf in Bangalore, India for two years beginning in 1983. In India, Charles fell in love with Asia where he has lived ever since.
After India, he worked with a deaf school and the deaf community in Hong Kong for thirteen years. In 2000 he moved to Cambodia and became the director of the Deaf Development Programme which provides basic education, job training, interpreting services, sign language research, deaf community development, and social services.
Following his special interest in sign language and interpreting, Charles has been much involved in the promotion and development of sign language in Cambodia during the past nine years.
Ms Jessica Mak
Jessica Mak is currently a member of signit (http://signit.com.sing/) team in Singapore. She has been actively championing issues affecting the Deaf community in Malaysia and has more than five years of working experience in conducting and facilitating various programmes such as deaf culture and community-related issues – Deaf against child sexual abuse and Deaf awareness issues. She is also the first Malaysian Deaf recipient of the Duskin Leadership Programme held in Japan for a period of one year.
PROFILE
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Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell
Dr Zubaidah Ibrahim-Bell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia.
Her interests cover much of the general field of translation and interpreting (English-Malay: Malay-English), including translator and interpreter education (e.g. for the National Institute of Translation and for the Legal & Judicial Training Department) and the evaluation of training programmes e.g. Interpreting Asia Interpreting Europe an EU-funded project on liaison interpreter training (English-Chinese-Vietnamese) 2006. Increasingly, since the completion of her doctoral research on legal interpreting (Court Interpreting in Malaysia in Relation to Language Policy and Planning, 2002), she has become involved in the provision of language services to the Deaf community in Malaysia and in the design of a common core training programme for spoken and signed language interpreters.
Her publications range from articles on court interpreter training and ethics, and the translation of travel literature, through editing and reviewing, to the production of multimedia EFL materials and technical translation from English to Malay and literary translations, in both directions. She is a member of the editorial board of Translation Watch Quarterly and currently heads a research project on Malaysian Sign Language with funding from the Ministry of Higher Education and the University of Malaya.
Ms Ho Koon Wei
Ms. Ho Koon Wei has been involved with the Deaf Community for the past 20 years. She has worked for the Pusat Majudiri ‘Y’, YMCA Kuala Lumpur and then the Majudiri ‘Y’ Foundation for the Deaf for seven years.
She has an M.A. in Linguistics from Gallaudet University, Washington, making her the first Deaf Linguist in Malaysia. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Deaf Studies, Mathematics and Computer Science from the same university. She is listed in the “Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges”. She is also the recipient of the award: “National Dean’s List”, “President’s Cum Laude Scholars” and “Dean List”.
Due to her contribution to the Malaysian Deaf Community, she was awarded the “Dignifying a Profession Award” by the Rotary Club of Petaling Jaya. She was invited to be one of the facilitators for a Workshop on Disability at the 12th YMCA World Council meeting held in Korea 1990. She also presented a research paper on “Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia – Syntax” at the 30th Anniversary International Conference: Language, Linguistics and the Real World, held in Kuala Lumpur in 2002.
Dr Felix Sze
Dr. Felix Sze completed her M.Phil degree in the Department of Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2000. Her M.Phil thesis, Space and Nominals in Hong Kong Sign Language, was the first academic thesis on the linguistic properties of Hong Kong Sign Language. She later obtained her Ph.D degree from the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, in 2008 and the title of her dissertation was Topic Constructions in Hong Kong Sign Language. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS), CUHK.
In addition to providing sign linguistic training to undergraduate and post-graduate hearing students at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, CUHK, Dr. Felix Sze is also one of the sign linguists running the Asia-Pacific Sign Linguistics Research and Training Program funded by the Nippon Foundation at CSLDS. Her main duty is to provide sign linguistic training to the deaf trainees and hearing research students from the participating Asia-Pacific countries and setting up research projects in relation to the sign languages in the region.
Her research interests include information structure, non-manual signals, sign language typology and sign language acquisition.
Liza B. Martinez, Ph.D.
Dr. Liza B. Martinez is Founder and Director of the research NGO, the Philippine Deaf Resource Center, Inc. She is one of only two hearing sign linguists in the Philippines and the only one actively involved in sign linguistics and deaf research. She trained at the renowned Deaf institution, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.).
She has held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in academic institutions and programs for the Deaf at home and abroad: Gallaudet University, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (New York, U.S.A.) and the De La Salle University (College of St. Benilde). In addition, she has been a faculty member of De La Salle University, Manila; the University of the Philippines; and Ateneo de Manila University.
She has lectured extensively on sign language linguistics throughout the Philippines sincen1995 and has also been an invited resource speaker on sign language in Japan and Malaysia.
She has several publications on sign linguistics and sign language research locally and abroad, is the primary contributor to the pioneering linguistic series “An Introduction to Filipino Sign Language”, and project leader for major advocacy projects such as “Equal access to communication for the deaf in legal proceedings”.
She has maintained involvement in various grassroots Deaf organizations such as the Philippine Federation of the Deaf, the Filipino Deaf Women’s Health and Crisis Center, Support and Empower Abused Deaf Children, Filipino Deaf Visual Art Group and Dulaang Tahimik Pilipinas (Silent Theater Philippines).
Roger T Bell
Roger Bell has been involved in applied linguistics – language teaching, translation studies and translator and interpreter education – since the early 1960s at the Universities of Lancaster (1965-1983), Westminster (1984-1994), Karachi (1971), Brasília (1995), and the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur (1998-99) and Fairview International School (Director: 2002-present).
Before his retirement, he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Westminster in the UK and is currently a Visiting Professor there and at the University of North Sumatra, Indonesia. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (London).
His publications (5 books and some 70 papers) span sociolinguistics (language variation; bilingualism and multilingualism) and applied linguistics (language teaching; translation and interpreting theory) and educational development (academic and business).
His 1991 book Translation and translating: theory and practice has been translated into Romanian (2000), Korean (2001), Chinese (2005) with Russian and Malay translations in the press and plans for a Hindi version in the near future.
He has also acted as a consultant to a wide range of organisations including the Nuffield Foundation on the Interpreter Project (1991-1995), which led to the creation of the UK National Register of Public Service Interpreters and, since 2002, to the National Institute for Translation and Interpreting Malaysia (ITNM) on strategic planning, quality assurance and practitioner training and currently as linguistic consultant to the UM SL research project.
Currently he runs workshops on presentation and facilitation skills, and the application of this to tertiary-level pedagogic skill development for academic staff: lectures, seminars, tutorials/coaching and conference presentation techniques through his company RZ Language Link Sdn. Bhd.
Dr Ibrahim Haji Ahmad
Dr Ibrahim Haji Ahmad obtained his doctorate degree in Malay lexicography from the University of Malaya and is a dictionary compiler and researcher. He has compiled several dictionaries in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) Kuala Lumpur where he worked as an editor of Kamus Dewan. He was also appointed as the expert dictionary compiler for DBP Brunei Darussalam to produce the Kamus Bahasa Melayu Nusantara (published 2003). He has written extensively on dictionary compilation including a book entitled Perkamusan Melayu: Teori dan Praktis. In 2007, he was awarded Hadiah Karya Ilmiah (Bahasa) by DBP. In September 2007, he joined University of Malaya as a member of academic staff in the Malay Language Department, Academy of Malay Studies.
Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim
Abdul Rahim Mat Yassim has a Master’s degree in Modern Language Studies and is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics specialising in the field of Language and Speech Pathology. He worked as medical assistant in the General Hospital Kuala Lumpur prior to joining the University of Malaya as a lecturer. He is a member of the Sign Language research team and the Language and Communication Disabilities Research Cluster in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics.
Dr. Abdullah bin Yusoff
Dr Abdullah bin Yusoff received his first degree from the Universiti Putra Malaysia and later his Master’s from the University of Malaya. He obtained a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He has been involved in teaching the Deaf since 1983 and has also attended short courses on management of the disabled in Japan. Dr Abdullah has also worked as an administrator in the Department of Special Education at the Ministry of Education. In addition, while in New Zealand, he worked with a NGO dealing with people with learning disability. At present he is the Head of the Special Education Department at Malaysian Teachers Education Institute in Kota Bharu, Kelantan and education advisor for the Deaf Association in Kelantan. He is actively involved in writing on language education for the Deaf.
Che Rabiaah binti Mohamed
Che Rabiaah binti Mohamed began a career as a nurse at Kubang Krian USM Hospital after completing a basic course in Nursing from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. She obtained her first degree in Nursing Science at UM and hence developed an interest in Human Communication Disorders. She then went on to gain a Master’s degree in Modern Languages. Currently, she is completing her PhD research at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in the field of stroke patients. She has a wide experience as a nurse and presently is a senior lecturer in Nursing Science at the School of Health Science in Health Campus, Kubang Krian, Kelantan.
Charles Dittmeier
Charles Dittmeier is the director of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme (DDP) in Cambodia.
He has worked with the deaf community since 1969, first working with the Catholic deaf community, and as a deaf program director and a sign language interpreter in the United States, and then serving as a resource person for moral education at the Technical Training Centre for the Deaf in Bangalore, India for two years beginning in 1983. In India, Charles fell in love with Asia where he has lived ever since.
After India, he worked with a deaf school and the deaf community in Hong Kong for thirteen years. In 2000 he moved to Cambodia and became the director of the Deaf Development Programme which provides basic education, job training, interpreting services, sign language research, deaf community development, and social services.
Following his special interest in sign language and interpreting, Charles has been much involved in the promotion and development of sign language in Cambodia during the past nine years.
Jessica Mak
Jessica Mak is currently a member of sign.it (http://www.signit.com.sg/) team in Singapore. She has been actively championing issues affecting the Deaf community in Malaysia and has more than five years of working experience in conducting and facilitating various programmes such as deaf culture and community-related issues – Deaf against child sexual abuse and Deaf awareness issues. She is also the first Malaysian Deaf recipient of the Duskin Leadership Programme held in Japan for a period of one year.
