Country Report

Preserving A National Heritage
Through Multilingual Information Technology

Dr. Ahmad Zaki Abu Bakar
Associate Professor
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Systems
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Skudai, 80990 Johor Bahru
Johor, MALAYSIA
zaki@mail.fsksm.utm.my
And
Chairman
National Multilingual Information Technology Standards Committee
SIRIM Berhad, MALAYSIA


Abstract
This paper is a country report to provide a brief report on the progress and achievements of the multilingual information technology activities in Malaysia since the last MLIT-2 symposium in Tokyo. An interesting development is regarding Jawi, the traditional Malay writing script and a Malaysian national heritage, which recently received a tremendous support to revitalize its usage through the use of multilingual information technology.

1　　The Demise of a National Heritage
Jawi, the traditional Malay writing script based on the Arabic writing script was widely used in the Malay Archipelago since the 1300's. However, during the 1960's, Jawi became less prominent after the Malaysian Government officially adopted the use of the romanized writing system or Rumi as the medium to write the Malay language. Jawi became more confined to Islamic matters and is used in the Islamic courts, mosques, religious offices and religious schools.

With the popularity of Rumi due to its wide usage in education and official correspondence, less Malaysians were able to read the Jawi. As a consequence, a popular daily newspaper published in Jawi, the Utusan Melayu, which was in wide circulation for more than 50 years, suffered greatly. At one instance, its publication was almost stopped. At this juncture, many Malaysians have the firm belief that Jawi will soon be extinct if no serious effort is undertaken to save it.


2　　Jawi's Revival
Jawi has certainly a high survival rate. Recently, maybe due to the resurgence of Islam or out of pure nationalistic feelings, there have been a lot of efforts to save the Jawi as a national heritage and to reintroduce it in a stronger manner in the public school curriculum.

Publication of Jawi-Rumi dictionaries, Jawi spelling lists as well as books and audio visual aids to quickly master the learning of the Jawi have also helped to promote the revival of the Jawi. There are even strong campaigns being garnered to promote the learning and use of the Jawi. These campaigns are not only being promoted by the Malaysian government but are also conducted by the private sector. An example is the Jawi campaign carried out by the Utusan Melayu Berhad and RMC Management Corporation in the Malay daily newspaper, the Utusan Malaysia and selected schools.

There are now also more interesting television and radio programmes to learn the Jawi. The programmes are not aimed solely at the Muslim population but at the general public. Jawi is a writing script for the Malay language and hence should be known to all Malay language users regardless of their race and religion.


3　　Demands for Jawi on Computers
The popularity of Jawi received further impetus from the information technology sector. There are many reasons for these. Firstly, with the advent of Smart Schools as one of the flagship applications of the Multimedia Super Corridor, there is now an immediate demand to have the Jawi on computers for edutainment and computer-based training purposes.

Secondly, in line with the country progress and the information revolution, the Malaysian Islamic religious departments and courts are also being modernized to keep abreast of the latest technology. The Malaysian mosques too, are being mordernized to recreate its use as centers of learning and activities. Here again is a great need to have the Jawi on computers to facilitate office automation and administration. In line with the government desire to use less paper and create an Electronic Government, many of the paper records, proceedings, sermons and files written in Jawi will certainly have to be transferred into computer soft copies. Their easy retrieval, processing, dissemination and storage will also need to be automated and networked to ensure high work productivity.

Thirdly, the success of Islamic banking and financial system also helped to promote the use of the Jawi in on-line business transactions through computers. Bank users and personnels have now the option to use Jawi or Rumi when interacting with the bank computer systems.

Lastly, the popularity of the Internet has also prompted the requirement for an Internet browser able to create and display web pages as well as the sending and receiving of e-mails written in Jawi. This demand is not only coming from Islamic schools but also from public and private schools, institutions of tertiary education and the general public.


4　　Quenching the Thirst for Jawi
With so many requests and demands to have Jawi on computers and for specific computer applications with Jawi, several projects have been launched to fulfill these demands. As an example, Mosque Net has been launched recently by a state-owned company in the Kulim HiTech Park in the northern state of Kedah to connect mosques in the state into a computer network with various computer applications which support Jawi.

Last year, the mass media reported news of a private company being engaged by a leading Islamic bank to provide a comprehensive Islamic banking solution, which supports Jawi. Recently, it was reported that the project is moving on well despite the current economic turmoil facing the country and Asia.

With the recent interests in Jawi, several local software houses have also published softwares for Jawi. As an example, a company called Softrade has released to the Malaysian market several softwares such as a Jawi editor program called Jawi Writer and a daily prayer display program in Jawi called Daily Doas for the PC market. However, it should be stated that this is not the first time a Jawi word processor is released into the market. The Universiti Sains Malaysia and Winsoft of France released a commercial Jawi word processing program called Winsoft Jawi in 1994.

As a matter of interest, the first prototype Jawi computer which was able to accept Jawi inputs and display them on a split screen was actually invented by the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 1983. Interestingly, several research projects on the Jawi are currently underway in the Malaysian local universities. A worthy project to mention is the development of a system to recognize handwritten Jawi scripts and conversion of Jawi scripts to Rumi scripts carried out at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia by two lectures from the Mara Institute of Technology for their Ph.D. thesis. Specifically this project is able to recognize Jawi characters in old literature manuscripts and convert them into Rumi text.

JAWINET is another project, which ran since last year to provide selected schools with computers, which can be connected to the Internet with applications supporting Jawi. This is to enable them to send and receive e-mails in Jawi as well as post web pages in Jawi. The project was able to quickly take off due to the availability of a multilingual browser called Tango from Allis Technologies Inc. Tango is able to display multilingual text including the Jawi.


5　　Paving the Future for Jawi
The success of the JAWINET project attracted the attention and imagination of several other parties to launch a bigger project called Digital Jawi. A signing ceremony was held last March between the Islamic Development Department of Malaysia (JAKIM), Association of Jawi Writing Enthusiasts (PENJAWIM) and the University of Malaya. The three parties jointly agree to expedite research, development and application of information technology as a strategic tool to develop and disseminate the Malay language in Jawi through out the world.

Specifically, there were five items in the memorandum, which act as the basis for the cooperation. The items are:

  1. To produce the architecture, standards, technology, product and services related to Digital Jawi and JAWINET.
  2. To produce an Internet software for the JAWINET system to enable Internet users to surf, read, author and communicate in Malay either in Jawi or Rumi.
  3. To organise educational and training programs to use the Digital Jawi technology.
  4. To form an organisation able to gather members from various fields which can contribute to the continuos development of the Digital Jawi.
  5. To promote Digital Jawi and JAWINET.
In line with the five agreed items, a workshop was then held at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya on 1 July 1998 to discuss plans for the implementation of the Jawi Digital and JAWINET projects. It is at this workshop that several experts of different fields and discipline were able to meet to brainstorm the best course of action to take to implement the projects. It was then agreed upon that the University Malaya is to be the base for the project. The University of Malaya will duly provide a suitable room and facilities for the project. In particular a computer server is to be set up to host the JAWINET home page. This home page is to disseminate information pertaining to the Jawi and Malay language as well as activities of the Jawi Digital project. The varied content of the home page will be updated regularly by the University Malaya researchers. Several technical meetings were latter held at the University of Malaya as well as virtually over the Internet to discuss various issues of the project. From these meetings the need for new standards for Jawi were identified.


6　　MLIT Standardization
The National Information Technology Standards Committee met in the early part of the year to discuss new ways to adopt, adapt and create information technology standards for Malaysia. In anticipation for the need of multilingual information technology standards, the national committee agreed to form a new committee to look into the multilingual information technology standards. This is an important event for MLIT because Malaysia is now formally recognising the need for MLIT standards in Malaysia.

The National Multilingual Information Technology Standards Committee, which is based in the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM Berhad), is expected to look into various MLIT issues in Malaysia. Jawi is certainly high on its priority list.

Issues such as character coding standards for Jawi, standard keyboard layout for Jawi, sorting standards for Jawi and Rumi will be addressed. The current Malaysian standard for Jawi characters, the MS 1368, is for 8 bit character codes. This standard will certainly need to be updated to be able to be compatible with the current Unicode and ISO standards for multibyte codes. In this case, the Digital Jawi project will mutually benefit from the standardization activities carried out by the national MLIT Committee at SIRIM.

Beside looking at Jawi, the Malaysian MLIT Standards Committee will also be required to look at standards for other widely used native languages in Asia to enable these languages to be able to be compatible with Malaysian computers. This is to fulfill the requirements for the Borderless Marketing flagship application of the Multimedia Super Corridor. In this regards the continued participation in the MLIT symposium and networking will be of great value to the work being carried out by the Malaysian national MLIT standards committee.


7　　Conclusion
It with great pleasure that I am able to report to this MLIT-3 symposium the great progress being achieved in MLIT in Malaysia, this year. Compared to the MLIT-1 in Singapore, I had not much to report on the MLIT activities in Malaysia because of a lull period in MLIT research and development. The many MLIT activities this year are certainly a pleasant surprise. The creation of a national MLIT standards committee and the Digital Jawi project has greatly assisted to the preservation and continuance of life for a national heritage, which was at the brink of extinction. The continued support and interest in MLIT by member countries will certainly give equal opportunity to our native languages in this information era.

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