Wikisource Conference 2025/Submissions/Lifting Up the Submerged Lumber: Revive Jawi's Heritage Together

Title of the submitted proposal: Lifting Up the Submerged Lumber: Revive Jawi's Heritage Together
Description: This presentation will provide an overview of the efforts to preserve Jawi heritage by making it more accessible digitally in its original form, especially on Malay Wikisource. It will cover the importance of preserving Jawi original text, some obstacle encountered along the way, and recent works that request more colaboration, not just from Malay speaker.

Jawi, also known as Arab Melayu, is a script used to write Malay and several neighboring languages. It has been in use since the 14th century, and only got replaced by the Latin script less than a century ago. As a result, many of the original Malay sources freely available today are written in Jawi. To preserve historical authenticity, it is important to transcribe these sources in their original script, rather than simply transliterating them into Roman letters.

However, typing in Arabic can be challenging, let alone in Jawi, especially transcribing old manuscripts. Some efforts already been made, but perhaps we can gain further insights at this conference.

Due to its long history, the Malay language has interacted with many other languages. For example, literature of Arab and Farsi, which we share the same script with Malay for a long time, are often quoted in Malay texts, while some Malay works have been translated into English, Dutch, and French. We can bring this rich history of interaction into Wikisource, and its sister projects, such as Wiktionary. This interaction could benefit other Wikimedia projects, such as Wiktionary, where different variations of Malay spelling can be collected, and through the interactions between Malay and other languanges mentioned before, we can provide better examples and translations into the dictionary.

Relationship to Wikisource or to the theme: The word "heritage" is specifically included in the title, directly aligning with the theme "Transform & Preserve Heritage Digitally." This is particularly relevant as we will be discussing the preservation of Jawi heritage.
Username of speaker(s): Hadithfajri
Session type: Lecture (because we need feedback from the audience)
Duration: 30 minutes
Outcomes: The audience will become familiar with the Malay language written in Arabic script and inspire the audience to contribute, even if they do not speak Malay. Insight on how to display the variety of Arabic script are wanted from other languages that are, or were historically, written in Arabic script.