[Unpad.ac.id, 18/05/2016] Universitas Padjadjaran through Study Program Sundanese Literature Faculty of Arts (FIB) and Study Program Informatics Engineering Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) collaborated with Université de La Rochelle, France, to conduct digitalization and indexation of ancient Sundanese manuscript. This research is conducted as effort to conserve Sundanese culture.
The development of the research output was presented at this seminar held at the Rectorate Building Bale Sawala Jatinangor Building, Tuesday (5/17). The speakers were Dr. Drs. Undang Ahmad Darsa, M.Hum (Head of Study Undergraduate Program Sundanese Literature), Erick Paulus, M.Kom (Head of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Image Laboratory Study Program Undergraduate Informatics Engineering), and Prof. Jean-Christophe Burie (Head of L3i Lab, Université de La Rochelle).
Met after the event, Erick revealed that these research activities output would be set up in app search engine that could help future researchers in searching and learning ancient manuscripts.
“Hopefully one can find knowledge on the manuscripts,” said Erick.
In the course of this research, after digitizing manuscripts process, philologist then sorted words and translate the text into Sundanese and Indonesian through Latin script. In addition, this application would also include manuscript description, including manufacture year and original location.
Efforts in conserving ancient manuscripts were done because they were endangered by time, lack of research, obsoleteness of the ancient Sundanese. This could cause the overlooked information from the manuscripts.
“Many researchers wanted to find out the meaning of the manuscripts or the local resources in certain era. Yet they are lacking direct access to ancient manuscript, flipping through them every single time and causing damage,” said Erick.
This research started from Ancient Manuscript Digitalization and Indexation (Amadi) program conducted since last year. Aside from Sundanese manuscript digitalization process, similar research is applied to Balinese and Cambodia manuscript with collaboration of local university.*
Reported by Artanti Hendriyana / eh
