Grants:Project/PanLex/Balinese palm-leaf transcription platform on Wikisource/Timeline

Timeline for PanLex

Timeline	Date
[PanLex] Contact maintainers of ia-upload and LanguageConverter and coordinate work.	1 July 2020
[Carma Citrawati] Establishing connections with partners.	15 July 2020
[PanLex] Finish ia-upload work; batch upload Internet Archive items to Commons; initial testing on Wikisource.	1 August 2020
[PanLex] Finish ProofreadPage work; move data from Palmleaf.org to Wikisource (for testing, to be updated later); fully functional interface on Wikisource, except for LanguageConverter transliteration.	1 September 2020
[PanLex] Get feedback on Wikisource interface from Balinese community and update if necessary; finish LanguageConverter work; shift ongoing transcription work from Palmleaf.org to Wikisource.	1 October 2020

Monthly updates

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

June 2020

Carma Citrawati

We have listed potential stakeholders in Bali whose roles are highly related to this project. The selection of the listed names below, including governmental agencies, institutions and communities, is based on their active involvement and contribution in developing Balinese language, script, and literature. Potential stakeholders are as follows:

Culture Office of Bali Province
Institution of Balinese Language and Script
Balinese Language Educator
Udayana University
IHDN Denpasar (State Institute of Hindu Dharma Denpasar)
Allience of Balinese Language Care
Hanacaraka Society
Museum of Dukuh Penaban
MGMP of Balinese Language Denpasar
Mahima Community

This past month, We have initiated communication with some of agencies listed above without formal correspondence. It is due to the current situation in Bali which is not yet safe to conduct any face-to-face meeting, therefore We are having problems in making appointment with them. However, informal approach has been done to overcome this difficulty. We contacted several people in some of those institutions, and discussed the heart of this project with them as detail as possible. Early approach and communication with the stakeholders are essential during covid-19 pandemic today as we will be able to set future plans and on-target activities regarding socialization of Wikisource material.

Unsuccessful approach was with Culture Office of Bali Province, a governmental body storing the Balinese manuscripts and the rightful owner the manuscripts. Those manuscripts possessed by Culture Office of Bali Province were uploaded at Archieve.org, which now are the main source to be stored at Wikisource. The early attempt was without success because Bali government offices are concentrating at handling case of covid-19, including Culture Office of Bali Province. Consequently activities irrelevant to covid-19 was not taken into account for now.

On the other hand, a fruitful attempt was done in communicating with the head of Institution of Balinese Language and Script, Prof. Dr. I Nyoman Suarka, M.Hum. In this early approach, We had a chance to elaborate the core purpose of this project, and humbly asked for his support because Institution of Balinese Language and Script is one of the institutions whose major role is in the subject of preservation and development of the Balinese Script. The outcome was agreeable. Prof. Nyoman Suarka was positive towards this project, and in the future he is willing to assist me in holding a hearing with Culture Office of Bali Province when the circumstances are possible and getting better.

Another communication was done in past month; it was with Alliance of Balinese Language Care. The alliance has given us support ever since we initiated this project in June. We met the head of the alliance, I Nyoman Suka Ardiyasa. We discussed about many aspects regarding this project, mainly about program plan in conducting online dissemination. As the head of Alliance of Balinese Language Care, he is ready to assist me in training and informing the new Wikisource material. The members of Alliance of Balinese Language Care are consisting of teachers, university professors, and researchers in Balinese language and script, enabling the process of training more efficient.

PanLex

PanLex did the following work in June from June 15 (when funds arrived at Long Now):

Met with Carma Citrawati and discussed the grant and plan our work going forward.
Met with Satdeep Gill and discussed how our work should proceed on Wikisource.
Set up accounts on Toolforge.
Fixed an issue with the Balinese webfonts that we will be using.
Researched the Balinese transliteration scheme that we will be using (to be incorporated in LanguageConverter).
Began implementing ia-upload improvements (completed in an early July pull request).
Began adapting the Palmleaf.org transliteration interface to work on Wikisource.

July 2020

Carma Citrawati

We have contacted one by one and talk to all local communities listed in my previous report, including Wikipedia Bahasa Bali (Balinese Language Wikipedia), Penyuluh Bahasa Bali (Balinese Language Educator), Hanacaraka Society, Museum of Dukuh Penaban, Komunitas Mahima (Mahima Community), and the details are as follows: (1) Balinese Language Wikipedia has been working together with us and are ready to assisting this project. (2) Penyuluh Bahasa Bali or Balinese Language Educators are contract employees under Education Office of Bali Province working in each village in Bali. We have talked to the coordinator of Penyuluh Bahasa Bali, I Wayan Suarmaja and some educators regarding this matter, and they are ready to give their support in disseminating and socializing the software to larger group of people later as they are the front-liners in preserving the lontars. Educators in each regency in Bali is going to be the liaison unit of wikisource. (3) Mahima Community is one of well-established community in Northern Bali, Singaraja. The founder, Made Adnyana Ole, is ready to take part in socialization of the new software developed by wikisource.

Apart from the already listed local community, there is a new target community to be included in the socialization and dissemination namely Bali Cultural Heritage Conservation Office and pasraman (monastery) Rwa Bhineda. The representatives of both offices contacted us directly and stated their interest in joining the socialization program. Contacting a formal institution like a university, and a government office like Bali Culture Office requires a formal correspondence, and we are still working on drafting the formal invitation. We will finish the initial communication with formal institutions by the end of August.

Earlier this month, we have interviewed and discussed with resource persons of lontar copyright in Bali. Early communication was conducted by interviewing the founder of Hanacaraka Society, Sugi Lanus, and we discussed deeper about the function of lontar for local Balinese. Also, we managed to interview the chair of Balinese Language, Literature, and Script Institute regarding the copyright of Balinese lontar.

PanLex

PanLex did the following work:

Completed work on the IA Upload tool improvements.
Submitted a bot request to do a batch upload to Commons of Balinese manuscripts from the Internet Archive, and performed the batch upload.
Began work on adding Balinese support to LanguageConverter in order to perform Balinese-to-Latin transliteration.
Submitted updated Balinese fonts to UniversalLanguageSelector.
Set up an initial main page for Balinese on Multilingual Wikisource, and created several categories for Balinese.
Researched the structure of Wikisource in more detail, including the Proofread Page extension's content models (which we need to integrate with for this project).
Decided to connect the Palmleaf.org transcription interface to Wikisource via a user script rather than a Toolforge tool.
Adapted the Palmleaf.org transcription interface to be minimally compatible with Wikisource, and wrote a user script to load it.

We had regular discussions with Satdeep Gill and Carma Citrawati to coordinate this work.

August 2020

Carma Citrawati

This month, we has approached more institutions and communities regarding the socialization of Wikisource program. Firstly, we contacted IHDN Denpasar and representative of Teachers in Denpasar. The following week we are planning to talk to more Balinese literature departments in more universities because this program is beneficial for Balinese literature students. A student organization of Balinese literature department has shown their interest in joining the socialization program. Also, we are planning to reach Northern Bali area by working collaboratively with STAHN Mpu Kuturan in holding the socialization program.

Another support was shown by STIKOM Bali, one of the biggest IT universities in Bali, and by Balinese community of 1928, that both parties are ready to join and support the program. Balinese community of 1928 has contributed their hard work on restoring, repatriating music recordings and films of Bali Tempo Dulu (Bali Historical Era) archives.

Apart from building communication with more universities and communities, we also reached the coordinator of manuscript in Balinese Language Educator to consult about writing system and transliteration of Balinese script to Latin. Each regency in Bali has one coordinator in this field, and they have done database collecting on manuscript together with the transliteration.

From the discussion, we can conclude that the writing system used in transliteration is the system which is familiar to vast majority of people and is, therefore, well accepted. We hope that this discussion will give us a clear picture of transliteration writing system. Name of coordinator in each regency whom we have discussed with were: Ida Bagus Ari Wijaya (Buleleng), I Wayan Suarmaja (Gianyar), Putu Wahyu Wirayuda (Jembrana), Made Muliarta (Tabanan), Gede Wiratana (Klungkung).

The discussion is still going on because there are some unique cases in the typing process needing further discussion. Other than discussing with all coordinators in all regency, we also contact some practitioners who can give suggestions on unique cases relating to the writing system of Balinese manuscripts in Latin alphabet.

PanLex

PanLex did the following work:

Performed some fixes to the wikitext of the Commons batch upload from July.
Discovered an issue with page content language in the ProofreadPage extension and submitted a patch for it (task T259645).
Submitted a MediaWiki core patch to add ban-bali to the list of known language codes (task T245359).
Wrote a script to import wiki page content from Palmleaf.org to new pages on Wikisource, and performed an initial import.
Continued work on adapting the Palmleaf.org transcription interface.
Continued work on Balinese LanguageConverter and Balinese transliteration.

September 2020

Carma Citrawati

This month we have been coordinating with local communities regarding the project, particularly with the coordinators of Balinese educator whose main work is to transcribe manuscripts of lontar (palm-leaf). We also discussed the system of transcribing the diacritical marks for lontar with Sugi Lanus, which brought us to interview Ida Bagus Komang Sudarma in Singaraja, the creator of diacritical marks transcribing system which has been widely used in Bali, to collect further information about the system. This system was created when special cases found when transcribing the lontar in Puri Kauhan Ubud (Kauhan Ubud Royal House). Since then, to solve similar cases, the system has been used widely by Balinese educators until today.

Regarding wikisource try-out, we have added some features to it including creating initial guide and adding more information to help wikisource users navigate the page.

PanLex

PanLex did the following work:

Worked on a new #transliterate parser function in MediaWiki core and submitted a patch for it (task T263082).
Discussed different Balinese-to-Latin transliteration systems with Carma Citrawati, clarifying details and which should be the default on Wikisource.
Set up a MediaWiki instance on PanLex servers, which will be used to perform transliteration functionality pending the merging of patches into MediaWiki core.

October 2020

Carma Citrawati

This month, we have conducted a trial on operating Wikisource. From several people who worked on this trial, which are the lontar typists, there are a number of feedback and comments regarding the palm-leaf at Wikisource. The most important feature to add is the palm-leaf interface when the codes are typed, also the pictures’ quality on Wikisource should be enhanced including some adjustments on Wikisource’s interface.

Noting on those comments from the trial, currently we are still working on some improvements for instance, translating the initial guide, typing notes, and some other information into Balinese language in order to facilitate Balinese people in using the Wikisource.

PanLex

PanLex did the following work:

Continued work on transliteration setup on PanLex's temporary MediaWiki instance.
Implemented and tested transliteration rules, following specifications that Carma Citrawati previously provided.
Submitted patch for Balinese LanguageConverter (task T263082).
Copied Palmleaf.org documentation pages to new Wikisource pages.
Coordinated with Carma Citrawati to have people in Bali test the Wikisource interface and report any issues.
Fixed several interface issues that testers reported.

November 2020

Carma Citrawati

We are at the stage of preparing the project socialization and dissemination to local communities, institutions, and offices in Bali. We had to shift the date of the event due to the Wikisource workshop given by Indonesia Wikimedia Community on 13^th December 2020. We have distributed the invitations to several institutions and communities including IHDN (State Institute of Hindu Dharma) Denpasar, Institution of Balinese Language and Script, Cultural Values Conservation Office Balinese Language Educator, Hanacaraka Society, and MGMP of Balinese Language Denpasar,

The event will be held on 28^th December 2020 via Google meet (conducting a face-to-face meeting is still infeasible do to Covid-19) at 16.00-18.00 WITA (Indonesia Central Time Zone). This event aims at introducing Wikisource (in general) and the digitalized palm-leaf manuscripts at Wikisource; the detailed program as follow:

1. Introducing Wikipedia and Balinese Wikipedia Community

2. Brief information on Palmleaf.org and the digitalized palm-leaf storage Archive.org

3. Explanation on Wikisource

4. How to Access the digitalized palm-leaf at WikiPustaka (Balinese Wikisource)

5. Discussion Session

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request button

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New end date

February 28, 2021

Rationale

The main reason additional time is needed is because of delays while MediaWiki patches are reviewed and eventually merged. Some important patches have already been merged, but two important patches (transliterate function and Balinese LanguageConverter) are still under review. The time will also be useful to allow additional testing by Balinese users (in order to fix any issues that come up), and to complete documentation. Additional funding is not needed.

Extension request approved

This request is approved. Your new Project End Date is February 28, 2021.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Noting here that your new final report due date is 30 March 2021 and that your midpoint report is past due. Please ping projectgrants

wikimedia.org after it is posted and is ready for review. Thank you. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 23:01, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Extension request 2

New end date

December 31, 2021

Rationale

The final step in this project is moving the palm-leaf transcription work and related software to the new Balinese Wikisource site. Site creation is already in progress (task T284389). While I hope everything will go smoothly, I want to be sure to be available to address any issues that come up in setting up the new site and over the coming months as the Balinese community switches to it from Palmleaf.org. There are still adequate grant funds for this. In the mean time, I can draft the final report so it will be mostly ready to go at the end of the year. --Lautgesetz (talk) 20:45, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Extension request approved

This request is approved. Your new Project End Date is December 31, 2021. Your final report is due January 31, 2022. Please ping projectgrants(_AT_)wikimedia.org after it is posted and is ready for review.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)