Wunderkammer Import Package : a tool for the display of multimedia dictionaries on mobile phones

INTRODUCTION. Wunderkammer (henceforth Wk), a tool for the adaptation and display of multimedia electronic dictionaries on mobile phones, is an open-source software package developed in 2008 by James McElvenny and colleagues under the rubric of the Project for Free Electronic Dictionaries (PFED: www.pfed.info/). Wk was predominantly developed for the creation of mobile phone-compatible dictionaries for small endangered languages, particularly in Aboriginal Australia. Kaurna in South Australia and Wagiman in Northern Territory are two key languages for which dictionaries were produced in the development phase of Wk. These are language reclamation and language maintenance situations where there is much community need for resources that make traditional languages accessible on a daily basis. It is the concerns of these types of language situations which informed the development of this software: linguists involved in PFED wanted to take advantage of the spread of mobile phone technology into these communities as a medium for accessible multimedia dictionaries. This review includes general information about the software and its capabilities, as well as a discussion of the creation and distribution of a Wk dictionary for Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u, two dialects of a moribund language from the northeast coast of Australia. I will provide a workflow overview based on my experience using the Wk Import Package (section 3), followed by some discussion of the distribution of—and the end-user response to—the resulting Umpila/Kuuku Ya’u Wk dictionary (section 4).