WikiTuPrèt èn WikiPerkawi: Improving Betawi Language Representation in Digital World through Foods and Dictionary

People say that languages and foods are what make us human. We use languages to transfer what we think, know, and want to other people wirelessly through the languages we use, whether spoken, written, or signed. The more we know languages, the more we have ways to express ourselves. Similarly, we use food in almost everything that we do. We use food to improve our mood, we use food to celebrate, and we use food to connect with people, at least for me.

What if we combine those two: learning (and improving) languages in the digital age through food? That is what we, Enclekan Wikimédia Jakarta, a local Wikimedia community in Jakarta, have done through a program we called WikiTuPrèt èn WikiPerkawi. In this program, we combine two programs into one: WikiTuPrèt, a photowalk of traditional Betawi cuisines; and WikiPerkawi, a program to improve Betawi Wiktionary that is currently still in Incubator. This program is supported by the Dana Wiki program from Wikimedia Indonesia and ran from April 28, 2025, to May 31, 2025.

WikiTuPrèt

WikiTuPrèt, an acronym of ngetug¹ and ceprèt,² is a program designed to take pictures of Betawi traditional cuisines. Through this program, we travel around Jakarta, Tangerang, and Bekasi almost every weekend to take pictures of traditional Betawi cuisine. The results? We have successfully taken pictures of 31 main courses, 6 beverages, 20 snacks, and light meals.³ Out of those, we uploaded 265 pictures to Wikimedia Commons, wrote and improved 20 articles in Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia and 18 articles in Wikipédia Betawi, and made 157 edits in Wikidata related to those foods. Besides, since we travel to several places, we have also written and improved several articles in our newly published Wikiwisata bahasa Indonesia.

The program is not only sunshine and rainbows, though. We had some problems, especially in operating a digital camera. Yes, we had a problem with the main thing that we need to do for the program. However, we are not without a solution. While some were figuring out how to operate the digital camera, others were already taking pictures with their own smartphone. That is why we learnt that all of us need to learn how to operate a digital camera and not only depend on one person. Despite that, it was fun. We learnt not only about food, but also how to operate technology.

WikiPerkawi

If we travel on the weekend, we work on WikiPerkawi on weekdays. WikiPerkawi, an acronym for “Permak Kamus Betawi“, is another program we have developed simultaneously. On this program, we added to and improved Wikikamus Betawi by incorporating words from several languages into the page. These languages include Indonesian, Betawi, English, Japanese, Sundanese, Bata Toba, Malay, Nias, Tagalog, and Sasaknese. We also used Lingua Libre to record the pronunciation of some Indonesian words and add them to the dictionary. In total, we added 2056 words to Wikikamus Betawi and recorded and uploaded 910 recordings to Wikimedia Commons.

Conclusion and What’s Next

It was a fun experience for all of us. We had a great time traveling, tasting, and taking pictures of the Betawi traditional cuisines while improving our dictionary. We are quite proud of the results of the program. Therefore, we plan to go bigger: to document traditional foods throughout Indonesia. There are several local Wikimedia communities in Indonesia that have great potential to cooperate to make this a bigger program. But why stop there? We can go even bigger: to document traditional cuisines in Southeast Asia, or even the world. We encourage you to document traditional cuisines in your own area with your local community. Let’s learn and let’s eat!

Footnotes

1. Taken from Betawi, literally means “walk” ↩︎
2. Taken from Betawi, literally means “to take picture” ↩︎
3. The lists of foods can be accessed through the report on our Meta-Wiki page. ↩︎