By Israel Bulus, Kaduna
The Tyap Wikipedia User Group has trained 20 participants to become Jju Wikipedia editors to help improve the translation and editing skills of the literate Bajju people predominantly found in Kaduna State.
PUNCH reports that the training was aimed at inculcating the participants with the necessary knowledge on how to edit specific articles from English Wikipedia to the jju language in the Wikimedia Incubator and Translatewiki websites.
The Executive Director of Tyap Wikimedians User Group, Levi Kambai Timothy, while fielding questions from AREWA PUNCH on Monday, said the Jju Wikipedia Outreach was designed to kick-start training of Jju speakers on how to create articles in the Wikimedia incubator.
He explained that the Wikimedia incubator is a site that’s owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, noting that it’s the site that usually introduces languages that’ll eventually become Wikipedias, Wiktionaries, etc., in the future.
” The Jju Wikipedia was introduced in the incubator just early this month and we didn’t have anything serious happening on the website, but we believe with this very program we now have 15 editors who speak the Jju and at least 5 of them are experts in writing the Jju language who will serve as guides to others within the time frame.
He said the response from the participants was very encouraging unlike when they had the first Tyap Wikipedia language training which the numbers were less and they had a lot of people who couldn’t read or write in the Tyap language but right here in the Jju training they have members of the Jju language board and 3 people who also know how to read and write in Jju.
” We are confident that these members of the Jju development board will be able to help those who are present in their spellings to be in uniform and not spell words incorrectly,” Levi added.
He disclosed that their motto for the Tyap Wikimedians User Group was to promote the Wikimedia projects in Tyap and Nenzit sister-languages.
” Our Wikimedia Foundation affiliate is bearing the name Tyap Wikimedians User Group but we have the intention of renaming it to the Nenzit Wikimedians User Group and the organization so that we can capture everybody.
” For some who do not know what Nenzit is, the Nenzit identity was first promoted in the 1950s by the first educated clergies in Southern Kaduna when it was called Southern Zaria, and the Jos Plateau.
” People like Rev. Nwayya Bagayya from Gworog and Rev. David Lot from Jos, these are people from Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Southern Bauchi, Southern Gombe, Niger, Southern Kebbi, and Taraba, in the Middle Belt, who saw the need to reintegrate into one because we have so many ethnic groups and languages that are related, having the same culture and religion, but don’t have a common sense of belonging together or a common name.
“So, we want to promote all the Plateau languages under the Nenzit and inculcate them into the Wikimedia projects. After we are done with the Jju language we’ll then extend the work to other languages.” Kambai stated.
One of the participants, Antyokaryi Joshua Nzamah, commended the Wikimedians User Group for the initiative, saying that the project will not only help to preserve languages but also document them.
This initiative is trying to see how our languages that are fast going into extinction can be preserved, documented and made accessible to the people on the Internet.
