English Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in Bhutan, offering a wealth of facts and information. However, a Bhutanese perspective is essential for topics on Bhutanese culture, history and religion. To address this, a group of monks in Paro participated in a three-day training to contribute to Dzongkha Wikipedia. With support from the Australian Research Council, they created and posted 15 new articles. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit with contributions from volunteers worldwide.
15 monks with basic English skills from the Serlung Pekar Choling Goenpa attended the training facilitated by three Australian media professionals through the Wiki-Bhutan Project. The monks were introduced to Wikipedia and learned to contribute to Dzongkha Wikipedia by posting articles, audio, video and photographs. Each monk now has a Wikipedia account.
Tenzin Kezang, a 26-year-old blogger and a writing enthusiast previously posted his Dzongkha works on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram but could not garner much viewership. He believes this new platform will help him reach a wider audience and promote Dzongkha.
“This platform will help aspiring writers like me. When we contribute an article, it will be thoroughly checked and edited for sentence structure and grammar, allowing us to learn and improve. This will encourage people like us to write more. Additionally, readers will benefit from the content we provide.”
“We study history, and important figures from the past and as monks, we have valuable knowledge to share. So, this platform will also help us tell these stories and inform those seeking knowledge,” said Sonam Gyeltshen, a participant.
“Today we are allowing students to learn how to use Wikipedia. Once they master it, we will learn from them and we will contribute as well. Today, there are many articles on various platforms and we feel we can also make valuable contributions,” said Tshering Dorji, a teacher at Serlung Pekar Choling Goenpa.
The Dzongkha edition of Wikipedia was started in 2014 by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide content in diverse languages and preserve knowledge in lesser-spoken languages.
Today, there are only about 200 articles on Dzongkha Wikipedia.
“The monastic body holds the culture, the knowledge; they are experts of Dzongkha, they are scholars of dharma. All of these things can be what will make Dzongkha Wikipedia viable to Bhutan. English Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites from Bhutan and this is great because English Wikipedia has so much facts and information but when it comes to culture and Bhutanese history and dharma, then it should be Bhutanese perspective,” said Bunty Avieson (PhD), project leader of Wiki-Bhutan Project.
“We suggested that Zhung Dratshang, especially the Tshugla and Shedras, are relevant for this project because their curricula are in Choekey and Dzongkha. So, this allows monks to translate Chokey into Dzongkha. These translations and contributions will benefit our youths as the country strongly emphasises preserving and promoting Dzongkha,” said Karma Dhendup, administrator of Dzongkha Wikipedia.
“The idea was, for them to look for pages on English Wikipedia about Bhutan and Bhutan-related things and add information on what wasn’t already there, find information that they wanted to correct. And now what we are doing is we have moved across to Dzongkha Wikipedia which has a lot less information. And they will decide what they want to present on Dzongkha Wikipedia because there are not many editors out there who speak Dzongkha but many people could use it as a resource in the future,” said Kathryn Avieson, a trainer at Wiki-Bhutan Project.
So far, the project has trained nearly one hundred monks and nuns across the country. The project will end next year.
Namgay Wangchuk & Karma Samten Wangda
Edited by Sonam Pem
