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'Kardinal' Online Dictionary Protects Indonesia's Languages
Ismira Lutfia | November 04, 2009

A screen grab from the Kardinal online dictionary. A screen grab from the Kardinal online dictionary.
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Fauzan Helmi Sudaryanto has demonstrated that you don’t have to leave your house to protect Indonesia’s heritage.

The 16-year-old high school student has developed an online dictionary of traditional Indonesian languages. He told the Jakarta Globe that his project, Kardinal (http://www.kamus-tradisional.web.id/), stands for “kamus tradisional online,” or online traditional dictionary.

“I surfed the Net and found very few references for traditional languages,” Fauzan said, adding that he first started to develop the dictionary with Kawi language, a branch of ancient Javanese, which now has entries of more than 450 words with English and Indonesian translations.

Kardinal was developed on a system written in the widely used PHP format. The dictionary is an open source project that allows anyone to contribute toward expanding the list of words.

“We have been online now for five months,” Fauzan said, although the site took three months to develop before it went live.

Kardinal has dictionaries for six traditional languages and five others are being developed. Fauzan said the project has eight active contributors.

Other languages included in the dictionary are Kurai Limo Jorong, a conversational language used in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, eight branches of local languages in Sulawesi and Sasak, a language spoken in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.

His efforts won him the award for best student project in the senior high school category at the Indonesia Information Communication and Technology Awards (Inaicta) 2009.

It was not Fauzan’s first award. Last year he won the same award in the junior high school category for another online application he created.

Fauzan said he started programming open source software when he was a junior high school student.

“I began to understand the benefits, then I thought about how to become a developer not just a user.”

Dendy Sugono, head of the Language Center at the Ministry of National Education, said the country has at least 746 local languages — about 12 percent of all languages in the world.

Dendy said nine local languages in Papua and one in North Maluku, called Ibu, are on the brink of extinction. There is just one Ibu speaker left.

“I fully support if there is someone from the younger generation who is interested in preserving local languages,” Dendy said, “As long as they are translated into Indonesian language, too, not just into English.”