Indonesiaku: Our Story

W

william.tan

Published on October 3, 2024

The journey of Indonesiaku began in late 23' when our founder recognized a growing disconnect between Indonesia's rich linguistic heritage and its digital future. While many celebrated Indonesia's technological advancement, we saw a concerning trend: the gradual erosion of regional languages in the digital age.

The Spark

"To have a second language is to have a second soul." — Charlemagne

This profound insight resonates deeply with Indonesia's multilingual heritage, where 71% of our population speaks multiple languages. Each of these languages offers a unique lens through which to view the world, shaping how communities think, feel, and express themselves.

Indonesia's linguistic landscape is extraordinarily diverse, with 726 recorded languages representing about 10% of the world's languages. However, UNESCO's prediction that 90% of these languages could face extinction within the next century struck a chord. We realized that without intervention, future generations might lose not just languages, but entire ways of understanding the world – countless "souls" that have been cultivated over generations through unique cultural and linguistic traditions.

Research

Our journey began with research. We developed NusaMT-7B, an AI model specifically designed for low-resource Indonesian languages. Eventually, our work was accepted at SoLaR@NeurIPS 2024 and SoCal NLP 2024. But we knew that academic research alone wouldn't bridge the digital divide affecting the 55 million Indonesians who don't primarily speak Bahasa Indonesia.

Our Initiative

Indonesiaku emerged as a comprehensive platform with two core pillars:

  1. AI-Powered Language Preservation: Building state-of-the-art models that help
  2. Community involvement: Building a community where native speakers can contribute to improve our models

Join Our Mission

Whether you're a native speaker who can help validate translations, a developer interested in improving our models, or someone passionate about preserving Indonesia's cultural heritage, there's a place for you in our community. Together, we can ensure that future generations inherit not just languages, but the rich cultural perspectives they embody.

"Each language lost is a unique way of seeing the world that disappears. Through technology and community, we can ensure these perspectives endure in our digital age."