EJAWI CONVERTER MOBILE APPLICATION

Nur Azie Hazmida Binti Abdul Hazis

Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) in

Electronics (Telecommunications)

2016/2017

EJAWI CONVERTER MOBILE APPLICATION

NUR AZIE HAZMIDA BINTI ABDUL HAZIS

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirement for the degree of

Bachelor of Engineering with Honours

Electronic (Telecommunication)

Faculty of Engineering

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

2016/2017

UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

Grade: _____________

Please tick ()

Final Year Project Report

Masters

PhD

DECLARATION OF ORIGINAL WORK

This declaration is made on the 24th day of July 2017.

Student’s Declaration:

I NUR AZIE HAZMIDA BINTI ABDUL HAZIS, 43070, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING (PLEASE

INDICATE STUDENT’S NAME, MATRIC NO. AND FACULTY) hereby declare that the work

entitled EJAWI CONVERTER MOBILE APPLICATION is my original work. I have not copied from

any other students’ work or from any other sources except where due reference or acknowledgement

is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by another person.

24TH JULY 2017 NUR AZIE HAZMIDA BT ABDUL HAZIS (43070)

Date submitted Name of the student (Matric No.)

Supervisor’s Declaration:

I ROHANA BINTI SAPAWI (SUPERVISOR’S NAME) hereby certifies that the work entitled EJAWI

CONVERTER MOBILE APPLICATION (TITLE) was prepared by the above named student, and

was submitted to the “FACULTY” as a * partial/full fulfillment for the conferment of BACHELOR

OF ENGINEERING (HONS) IN ELECTRONICS (TELECOMMUNICATION) (PLEASE INDICATE

THE DEGREE), and the aforementioned work, to the best of my knowledge, is the said student’s

work.

Received for examination by: ROHANA BINTI SAPAWI Date: 24TH JULY 2017

(Name of the supervisor)

I declare that Project/Thesis is classified as (Please tick (√)):

CONFIDENTIAL (Contains confidential information under the Official Secret Act 1972)*

RESTRICTED (Contains restricted information as specified by the organisation where

research was done)*

OPEN ACCESS

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I therefore duly affirmed with free consent and willingness declare that this said Project/Thesis shall

be placed officially in the Centre for Academic Information Services with the abiding interest and

rights as follows:

• This Project/Thesis is the sole legal property of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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distributed, published or disclosed to any party by the student except with UNIMAS

permission.

Student signature ________________________ Supervisor signature: ________________

(24TH JULY 2017) (24TH JULY 2017)

Current Address:

LOT 1327 LORONG CAHYA DAMAI 6L FASA 2 BANDAR BARU SAMARIANG JALAN SULTAN

TENGAH 93050 KUCHING SARAWAK

Notes: * If the Project/Thesis is CONFIDENTIAL or RESTRICTED, please attach together as

annexure a letter from the organisation with the period and reasons of confidentiality and

restriction.

[The instrument is duly prepared by The Centre for Academic Information Services]

APPROVAL SHEET

This project report which entitled “eJawi Converter Mobile Application” was prepared by

Nur Azie Hazmida Binti Abdul Hazis (43070) is hereby read and approved by:

_____________________ 24th July 2017

Dr Rohana Binti Sapawi Date

(Final Year Project Supervisor)

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project has been made possible from the co-operation and support endowed

by a lot of individuals. Earnest appreciation dedicated to all individuals involved

throughout the completion of the course Final Year Project as well as this report, had it

been a direct or indirect contribution, cooperation and assistant. I am using this

opportunity to express my deepest gratitude especially to my Final Year Project

supervisor, Dr Rohana Sapawi, who has been very supportive and putting so much effort

in coordinating this project. I am extremely thankful and indebted to her for sharing

expertise, as well as valuable guidance and encouragement extended to me. Special

thanks to my lecturer, Mr Chuah Kee Man, who in spite of being extraordinarily busy

with his duties, took time out to teach and guide me to familiarise myself with

development of mobile application. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends

for constantly giving me the moral support throughout the completion of this research

project.

ii

ABSTRACT

Ever since Roman alphabets were introduced to replace the traditional Jawi script in

Tanah Melayu, the interest in Jawi amongst the local has significantly dwindled. If no

preservation scheme is taken, it may disappear into extinction. Nonetheless, over the year,

various initiatives are developed in order to protect and popularise the script to younger

generation. From computer word processor, Jawi keyboard, Jawi-Rumi converters,

reading materials, games, text recognition researches to mobile applications, these

endeavours will continue to uphold the tradition to younger generation. In this project,

these undertakings in terms of digitising the script are discussed, and mobile applications

related to Jawi available in the market are analysed and compared. Subsequently, a new

mobile application that is able to convert Rumi to its equivalent Jawi spelling, either by

manual search or by exploiting text recognition from images technique is designed and

developed. Database system, Java programming language and Optical Character

Recognition (OCR) method are analysed and studied throughout the development of the

mobile application.

iii

ABSTRAK

Sejak tulisan Rumi diperkenalkan untuk menggantikan tulisan Jawi di Tanah Melayu,

minat terhadap tulisan Jawi semakin berkurangan dengan ketara. Jika tiada rancangan

diambil untuk memelihara tulisan ini, ia mungkin akan hilang dan pupus ditelan zaman.

Namun begitu, sejak kebelakangan ini, pelbagai inisiatif telah diambil untuk

mendigitalkan serta mempopularkan semula tulisan ini. Dari pemproses perkataan, papan

kekunci Jawi, penukar tulisan Jawi ke Rumi, bahan bacaan, permainan, kajian berkenaan

pengecaman teks dari gambar kepada aplikasi mudah-alih, usaha-usaha ini akan terus

memartabatkan tradisi ini ke generasi akan datang. Dalam projek ini, pendekatan-

pendekatan berkait pendigitan tulisan Jawi adalah dibincangkan dan aplikasi mudah-alih

yang berkaitan dengan Jawi yang terdapat di pasaran adalah dianalisis dan dibandingkan.

Dalam masa yang sama, sebuah aplikasi mudah alih baru yang boleh menukar perkataan

Rumi kepada tulisan Jawi samaada dengan menaip secara manual atau dengan

mengeksploitasi teknik pengecaman teks dalam gambar adalah dilakarkan dan dibina.

Sistem database, bahasa pemprograman Java serta Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

adalah dianalisa dan dikaji sepanjang pembinaan aplikasi mudah-alih ini.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgement i

Abstract ii

Abstrak iii

Table of Contents iv

List of Tables vi

List of Figures vii

List of Abbreviations ix

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Problem Statement 2

1.3 Objectives 4

1.4 Scope of Project 4

1.5 Thesis Outline 5

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction 6

2.2 Jawi Attributes and Linguistic Properties 6

2.3 Digitisation Development of Jawi Script 10

2.4 Jawi-Related Researches 12

2.5 Android Application Related to Jawi 14

2.5.1 Rumi-Jawi Conversion Apps 14

2.5.2 Edutainment Jawi Apps 18

2.5.3 Other Jawi-Related Apps 22

2.6 Summary 24

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction 31

3.2 Application Flowchart 31

v

3.3 Building Database 33

3.4 Android Studio 36

3.4.1 Building an Android Application 37

3.4.2 eJawi Converter Application

Workflow

39

3.4.3 Virtualisation of Android

Application

41

3.5 Text Recognition from Images 45

3.6 Iterating the Application 48

3.6.1 Debugging 48

3.6.2 Profiling 49

3.6.3 Testing 50

Chapter 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Introduction 51

4.2 Results 51

4.3 Discussions 58

4.4 Project Limitations 66

Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Introduction 67

5.2 Conclusions 67

5.3 Recommendations 68

REFERENCES 70

APPENDIX 74

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

2.1 Jawi Vowel and Diphthong Phonemes. 7

2.2 Jawi Consonant Phonemes. 9

2.3 Summary of Jawi-related Android application on

Google Play Store

24

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 Tulis Jawi App 15

2.2 Rumi to Jawi v2 App 16

2.3 Rumi to Jawi App 17

2.4 ejawi2u v1.0.8 App 18

2.5 Jom Jawi App 19

2.6 School of Iman App 20

2.7 Mari Belajar Jawi App 21

2.8 Cari Kata Jawi App 22

2.9 Jawi Keyboard Plugin App 23

2.10 Utusan Melayu App 23

3.1 Flowchart of the Project 32

3.2 The arrangement of Rumi, Jawi and the Join Database

Table

33

3.3 The Database ER Model Notation 34

3.4 SQLite Expert Personal Database Manager 36

3.5 Android Studio 37

3.6 Basic Workflow for Android Application Development 39

3.7 Android Manifest 41

3.8 Hardware Options for AVD Emulators 42

3.9 Select System Image for the AVD Emulator 43

3.10 Verify Configuration for the AVD Emulator 44

3.11 Android Manifest Statement for OCR and

CameraActivity.java

47

3.12 A Stack Trace in the Android Monitor logcat 49

3.13 Memory, CPU, Network and GPU monitor in Android

Monitor

50

4.1 eJawi Converter Introduction Layout 52

4.2 eJawi Converter Main Layout 53

viii

4.3 Main Layout Filtered List View 53

4.4 eJawi Converter Jawi Output 54

4.5 The Text Recognition Output When Image is Taken

Vertical to the Camera

55

4.6 The Text Recognition Output When Image is Taken

Horizontal to the Camera

55

4.7 The Text Recognition Output When Image is Taken

Diagonal to the Camera

56

4.8 The Text Recognition Output on Basic Font 56

4.9 The Text Recognition Output on Cursive Font 57

4.10 The Text Recognition Output on Handwriting 57

4.11 Codes for ‘Masuk’ Button in Introduction Layout 58

4.12 Codes for Android TextWatcher 59

4.13 Codes to Filter Result 60

4.14 Codes for Retrieving Information from Database 61

4.15 Codes to Start the Camera Activity 61

4.16 Codes to Adjust the Orientation of the Image 63

4.17 Codes to Obtain Tesseract Data from Asset Folder 63

4.18 Codes to Start the Text Recognition Process 64

4.19 Codes to Obtain Result from the Text Recognition

Process

65

ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

UI - User Interface

PK - Primary Key

ID - Identity Document

SQL - Structured Query Language

ER - Entity Relationship

IDE - Integrated Development Environment

SDK - Software Development Kit

APK - Android Application Package

CPU - Central Processing Unit

GPU - Graphics Processing Unit

AVD - Android Virtual Device

API - Application Program Interface

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

During the reign of Sultan Mansur Syah in the year of 1456, the empire of Melaka

was at the height of its glory. Melaka, then, was a renown centre for Malay Islamic culture

in the world. Its function as the heart of proliferation of education and Islam throughout

Southeast Asia was recognised especially as the role of the royal palace was expanded as

a learning institute, duplication and translating centre, as well as library for Malay Islamic

literary resources. The arrival of Islam religion in Southeast Asia and the Islamisation of

the current Sultan in the fifteenth century has pioneered written Malay language in Arabic

letters, which has become the origin of Jawi script [1].

Jawi (Jawi: جاوي Jāwī; Yawi in Patani; Jawoë in Acehnese) is a modified Arabic

letters to accustom the phonemes of the Malay language, Acehnese, Banjarese,

Minangkabau, Tausug and several other languages in Southeast Asia. The advent of Jawi

script has ostensibly become a turning point to the natives of Tanah Melayu, serving as a

key to development of culture and education. It once serves as the official writing script

in Tanah Melayu, proven by the first historical record written in Jawi, Terengganu

Inscription Stone (702 H I 1303 M), which discusses about the implementation of hudud

law or criminal law in an Islamic country [1]. However, Jawi has now plummeted to be

an endangered script. Research has shown that the mastery and interest of Jawi amongst

school students and university students including the Malays nowadays is disturbingly

low, with a number of them to be Jawi illiterate [2].

On the contrary, mobile applications are rapidly flourishing in today’s technology

trend. They have proven to be the most convenient and efficient for quick and easy use

2

as mobile devices easily become indispensable to everyday life. These applications give

the multifunctional advantages to a mobile device, which includes assorted categories

such as utilities, entertainment, games, news, productivity, lifestyle and social

networking. Evidently, over a third of the world’s population are predicted to possess a

smartphone by 2017, and of 98.4% combined share of smartphone market between iOS

and Android, 80.7% are dominated by Android phones. Currently, there are over 1.6

million of Android applications available on Google Play Store [3]. Henceforth, it is

plausible that this technology trend should be an effective approach to promote Jawi to

wider audience, especially to younger generation. Several companies and developers in

the past few years have jump into the bandwagon and produced a number of Android

applications related to Jawi.

1.2 Problem Statement

The introduction of Romanised Malay or Rumi script in Malay written text,

literature and journalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth century has threatened the

position of Jawi from an official script to minor roles such as for the writing of Islamic

and cultural documents and texts. The usage of Rumi becomes even more widespread

when it is elected as the official alphabet and writing of Bahasa Malaysia, as supported

by Penyata Razak 1956 and Akta Bahasa Kebangsaan 1963/67. Although the use of Jawi

script is not prohibited by all means, these enactments have greatly affected the popularity

of this writing method. If before it was broadly used in Malay literature, law and written

communication, now the roles have been reduced to the point of extinction.

Nowadays, Jawi serves as mere scribbling of khat on mosques, advertisement

board, road signs, emblems and letter headings when the economic value was much more

than that once before. Jawi has the potential of recognition amongst eastern countries had

it been commercialised systematically and widely through books and film subtitles,

mostly due to the strokes used in Jawi and Malay vocabularies are based from Arabic

language, which is one of the major languages in the world [2]. Additionally, in the effort

of the Southern East historical researches, including literature, collected works and

culture, knowledge on Jawi is fairly compulsory. This is because most old Malay

3

manuscripts found and explored are still not entirely Romanised [4]. Another importance

of Jawi is for the ease of learning the Arabic language and al-Quran. Regardless of its

system being comparatively different from Arabic’s, the basic of writing and reading

remains the same.

Despite the significance, a research shows that the mastery and interest of Jawi

amongst school students and university students including the Malays is a concern. This

problem not only occurs amongst students but also the teachers, whereas the level of Jawi

proficiency amongst teacher trainees is about average [2]. Likewise, the devaluation and

negligence of Jawi over time is demonstrated by the demolition of Model Kelas

Pemulihan Jawi (j-QAF), an additional course to improve Jawi reading and writing skill

of primary school students. Not only that the teaching and learning of Jawi is limited to

primary school level, it is also limited to Islamic and Malay language studies in university

institution such as Institut Pengajian Tinggi Swasta (IPTS) and Institut Pengajian Guru

(IPG) [2]. Ironically, the faculties of Islamic studies such as Usuluddin and Syariah does

not emphasise on Jawi proficiency and knowledge. This problem accentuates on

nationwide concern of constant dwindling of Malaysia’s treasure that holds a great value

in the country’s cultural identity and history.

There are several factors that led to this problem, one of them is the disinclination

of local publishers to publish reading materials such books, journals, magazines and

newspapers in Jawi. This problem is due to the shrunken number of the locals who are

Jawi literate. A national daily newspaper, Utusan Melayu, written entirely in Jawi, has

almost stopped its printing attributable to lack of sales [5]. A study about the relationship

of Jawi literacy with interest in Jawi amongst Form 2 and Form 4 students in two

secondary schools in Shah Alam and Kuala Lumpur shows that Jawi proficiency amongst

the students are very low, with average 41.82% of the students failed to connect the given

Jawi alphabets to form a word in a reading and writing test [6]. The result also shows that

essay writing skill in Jawi is below satisfactory when 71.32% of the students failed to

write the essay correctly, especially on high level comprehension questions. The relation

of these results with interest lies with the outcome of the survey that shows over 40% to

48% of the students stated their disinterest in Pendidikan Islam. Average 72.28% of these

students fail to transliterate Rumi words to its Jawi equivalence. 19.4% of Form 2 and

Form 4 students who excel in Pendidikan Islam have low Jawi skill, and whilst they fail

4

in Pendidikan Islam, their Jawi skill is also very low. Over half of the students would

rather learn other subjects than Pendidikan Islam, which shows that Jawi proficiency

amongst students is highly influenced by their interest in the subject rather than their

excellency in school [6].

1.3 Objectives

The objectives of this project are as follows;

i. To understand the database mechanism to store Rumi and its corresponding Jawi

spelling as well as programming in Java language for Android development.

ii. To analyse text recognition algorithm to identify and read texts from image.

iii. To develop eJawi Converter mobile application that converts Rumi to Jawi words.

1.4 Scope of Project

This project focuses on developing an Android application to convert Jawi scripts

into Rumi and vice versa by utilising IDE software Android Studio, SQLite Database

Manager and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This Android application includes a

text recognition method to identify Rumi scripts from a picture and convert it into Jawi.

The knowledge on Java language is needed in order to develop the application, as the IDE

software Android Studio employs Java language for the coding. Studies and researches

on database system and text recognition algorithm will also continuously done throughout

the completion of this project.

The database for this project, which consists of Jawi words and their matching

Rumi words, is built using SQLite Database Manager, whereas the development of the

Android application uses Android Studio. The Android application will be able to convert

text either by typing or by taking an image of the word to be translated through text

5

recognition system. The debugging, profiling and testing processes will be performed

continuously during the development of the application in order to make sure that the

application is behaving accordingly. Several text recognition techniques are tested in

order to find the most suitable and compatible one for the application considering several

aspects, such that the images of the text are taken from various positions and tested with

different text fonts to give out the best text recognition output.

1.5 Thesis Outline

Chapter 1 provides the overview of this project. The topics discussed in this

chapter includes introduction, problem statement, project objectives and the scope of the

project.

Chapter 2 discusses on the background studies in regard of this project. Journals

about the digitisation of Jawi in current technologies are revised and the existing Android

applications related to Jawi are debated and compared.

Chapter 3 describes the methodology used to develop the Android application, e-

Jawi Converter, the database system and the Optical Character Recognition for text

recognition purpose.

Chapter 4 discourses the mechanism of the developed Android application, e-Jawi

Converter. The results are shown and discussed in this chapter about the application’s

system reliability and execution process. This chapter also elaborates the project

limitation throughout its completion.

Lastly, Chapter 5 concludes the overall project process and proposes suggestions

for future work and improvement.

6

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the attributes and linguistic properties of Jawi script, as

well as the efforts and strategies to promote Jawi scripts amongst Malaysian,

particularly with the use of information technologies such as Android application. Each

Android application related to Jawi that are available in Google Playstore are analysed

and discussed in this chapter.

2.2 Jawi Attributes and Linguistic Properties

To create a mobile application to convert Rumi and Jawi words, it is important

to understand the attributes and linguistic properties, as well as the relationship of these

two scripts. There are several differences in these two scripts, considering that Jawi

script is an alteration of Arabic script in order to accommodate the Malay phonemes.

Several letters used in Malay are originally absent in Arabic script, and vice versa. For

example, there are no consonants چ (c), ڤ (p), ݢ (g), ۏ (v), ڠ (ng), ڽ (ny) and vocals ‘e’

and ‘o’ in Arabic, although the sound of the alphabets exists in Arabic language. Hence

the letters are added in Jawi for that purpose. Similarly, the Malay language used by the

Malays prior to arrival of Islam does not consist of consonants ذ (/ð/, /z/ or zal), ز (/z/

7

or zai), ش (/ʃ/ or syin), ص (/s/ or sod), ض (/d/ or dod), ط (/t/ or to), ظ (/z/ or zo), ع (/ʔ/

or ain), غ (/ɣ/ or ghain) and ء (/ʔ/ or hamzah) [4].

Phoneme is a unit of sound to distinguish a word from another, such that the

words ‘bat’ and ‘bad’ differs by the phonemes ‘t’ and ‘d’. It can be classified into three

classes; vowel, diphthong and consonant. In Jawi, there are six vowel phonemes (/a, e,

é, i, o, u /), three diphthong phonemes (/ai, au, oi/) and twenty-five consonant phonemes

(/b, c, d, f, g, ğ, h, dZ, k, kh, l, m, n, ŋ, ń, p, q, r, s, ś, t, v, w, y, z/) [7], which are

summarised in Table 2.1 below.

Table 2.1 Jawi Vowel and Diphthong Phonemes. [7]

Vowel Phonemes Diphthong Phonemes

Jawi Malay Jawi Malay

/ai/ ai /ai/ اءيـ /a/, /ə/ A /a/ ا

/ai/ a /au/ ايـ /i/, /é/ E /e/, /é/ ي

و اء /i/ I /i/ ى /au/ oi /oi/

/au/ او /u/, /o/ O /o/ و

/oi/ اوويـ /i/, /é/ /u/ يـ

/oi/ ويـ /u/, /o/ اي

او/a/, /i/,

/u/

8

In contrast to Rumi, a character in Jawi can represent more than one phonemes,

such that the characters ا (alif), و (wau) and ي (ya) can represent a, e, ə, é, i, o and u

sounds in Roman. For example, as shown in table above, the character ا (alif) represents

both the /a/ and /ə/ vowel phonemes, such as /a/ in ابو (abu in Rumi) and /ə/ in امڤت

(empat in Rumi). Furthermore, the spelling in Jawi does not work like that of Rumi.

There many exceptions such as “د” in “اد” is read as “ada” whilst “د” alone is read “di”,

also “دي” and “اي” are read as “dia” and “ia” respectively. There are several cases in

which the letter alif “ا” might be omitted or included in a word [8].

For one, the letter alif “ا” is mostly omitted in CVC syllables when representing

/a/, though included in monosyllabic words starting with wau “و”, such as “واو” (wau),

In root morphemes, when the first syllable is open and .(wang) ”واڠ“ and (wap) ”واڤ“

contains /e/ followed by second syllable beginning with /wa/, the letter alif “ا” is also

included. For example, the words “ليواه” (lewah), “ميواه” (mewah), “ يواند ” (dewan),

The cases .”و“ after wau ”ا“ contains the letter alif (rewang) ”ريواڠ“ and (tewas) ”تيواس“

in which the letter is omitted are when the last syllables started with any of the

consonants “ب” (ba), “ت” (ta), “ڤ” (pa), “س” (sin), “ݢ” (ga), “ن” (nun), “ڽ” (nya), “چ”

(ca), “ک” (kaf), “ج” (jim) and “م” (mim) in native Malay disyllabic root morphemes,

such as “راب” (raba), “مات” (mata), “نام” (nama) and “باچ” (baca), as well as some native

Malay tri-syllabic root morphemes ending with /ə/ with the mentioned consonants may

also omit the last “ا” (alif) [9].

Moreover, root morpheme-final /ə/ that is spelt with e in Rumi can instead be

written as “ى” (ye) in Jawi, whilst when it is in the middle of a word, it is spelt with “ا”

(alif). For instance, “ بوليسمىميتا ” (metabolisme) is originally spelt with “ى” but when

changed to “ممتابوليسماکن” (memetabolismekan), the syllable is spelt with “ا”. In addition,

the letter “ء” (hamzah) can be used to spell some diphthongs at the start of words as well

as to represent a hiatus or glottal stop (ʔ), such as when separating vowels at the

boundary of a root morpheme and an affix. This is shown in the words “داتوء” (dato’),

It is also .(diambil) ”دأمبيل“ and (peperiksaan) ”ڤڤريقساءن“ ,(daun) ”داءون“ ,(baik) ”باءيق“

noted that certain words that are spelt differently in Rumi can be homographs in Jawi,

such as “sembilan” and “sambilan” are both spelt “سمبيلن”, whilst “مرکه” may be read as

markah or merekah, and “سيسي” can either be read as sesi and sisi [9].

9

Jawi consonant phonemes are listed in Table 2.2, where 32 consonants represent

25 phonemes with the additional characters included on number 27 to 32 [7].

Table 2.2 Jawi Consonant Phonemes. [7]

No. Jawi

Character Name Phoneme No.

Jawi

Character Name Phoneme

/Ghain /ğ/, /gh غ .Ba /b/ 17 ب .1

/Fa /f ف .Ta /t/ 18 ت .2

/Qaf /q ق .Tsa /s/ 19 ث .3

/Kaf /k ک .Jim /dZ/, /j/ 20 ج .4

/Lam /l ل .Ha /h/ 21 ح .5

/Mim /m م .Kha /kh/ 22 خ .6

/Nun /n ن .Dal /d/ 23 د .7

/Wau /w و .dzal /z/ 24 ذ .8

/Ha /h ه .Ra /r/ 25 ر .9

/Ya /y ي .Zai /z/ 26 ز .10

/Ca /c چ .Sin /s/ 27 س .11

/Nga /ŋ/, /ng ڠ .Syin / ś /, /sy/ 28 ش .12

/Pa /p ڤ .Sod /s/ 29 ص .13

10

/Ga /g ݢ .Dod /d/ 30 ض .14

/Va /v ۏ .To /t/ 31 ط .15

/Nya /ń/, /ny ڽ .Zo /z/ 32 ظ .16

Another character mapping rules in Jawi to be noted is the flexibility of character

as they may be both consonant and vowel. If the position of (ya) ”ي“ and (wau) ”و“

character is at the beginning of the word, those characters represent as consonant [7].

Hence, these attributes and properties are not only important to be recognised in order

to create a transliteration converter application but also an interesting matter to learn.

2.3 Digitisation Development of Jawi Script

As Romanised Malay script or Rumi was chosen as the official alphabet and

writing of Bahasa Malaysia in 1956, the functions and popularity of traditional script

Jawi declined and gradually forgotten. Over the years, Malaysian has becoming aware

of the endangered culture and tradition that was once a symbol of modernisation and

triumph of Malaya empire. In return, various actions and strategies have been attempted

in order to revive the popularity of Jawi, at least so the younger generation could still

appreciate the traditional script. One of the strategies had been the instigation of Jawi

education in primary school level by the Ministry of Education Malaysia in the year

1982, with a hope that every Muslim child are able to read the Quran as well as read

and write Jawi upon advancing to secondary school. In 1983, Universiti Teknologi

Malaysia (UTM) has developed the first prototype computer to ever handle the Jawi

script, whilst collaborating with the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of

Malaysia (SIRIM) in order to devise a standard for Jawi national character set for data

interchange purposes, which later produces a character set compatible with the ISO8859

Arabic character set. In their attempt to promote Jawi, UTM has also designed a new

keyboard layout to support Jawi character input based on the ISO9036 code set, a

standalone version of Arabic characters using a 7-bit code set [6].