The complexities of translating from English to an Asian Language, such as Malay

Translating an article, a book or a piece of writing from one language into another is a job that requires a great deal of knowledge of both languages. Since the translator is not the original author and he may, as is obvious, has a weaker domain expertise and understanding of the content compared to the original author, the careful choice of words and grammar becomes even more critical to preserve the original or near-original meaning and sense of the original article. Particularly when you are translating a western language such as English into an asian language like Malay, such care becomes essential. Malay to English translation is no exception.

Most languages of the world are an output of the background of the cultural milieu in which people of a particular region have survived through centuries. Most languages even have temporal versions that is, archaic and modern. Languages like Malay have several structural peculiarities that are not found in English. Further, many words and usages creep into languages due to the customs, habits, daily lives and things as well as relationships that people share in the country of origin of a language. English to Malay translation also has such cases in abundance. Let us look at some of the major difficulties in English to Malay translation. Two major challenges in English to Malay translation relate to verbal forms (example, exhibit, presume, shout etc.) and the prepositions (to, by, in etc.). The contextual inference is to be drawn and placed as footnotes wherever such forms get translated to their near equivalents. Another major problem in Malay is the translation of certain pronouns. Examples of such pronouns are those, former, latter, another, one etc. Malay language often requires the subject to be repeated rather than deploying pronouns in the above cases. This happens even when the object is not particularly defined. The Malay pronouns of kita, ia, mereka, yang lain etc. may not be up to the task of translating from their English equivalents. Similarly, relative clauses in English that are introduced by prepositions e.g. from whom, in which etc. are almost impossible to be rendered equivalent Malay clauses. The only solution in such cases is to examine deep into the situation in which nouns and pronouns are used and then translate, if needed with an explanatory qualification. However the largest chunk of English to Malay translation inconsistencies occurs due to the Malay preposition “bagi”. It is found when the translation from English preposition of bagi gets wrongly placed within a sentence. Simple non phrases of English deploying “ing”, “en” etc. endings also become difficult to translate in Malay. Invariable adjectives in Malay language are preceded by the relative pronoun “yang”. This creates confusion when faced with English adjectives. In such cases, translation would require the addition of a Malay relative pronoun. Similarly Malay is not able to have exact equivalents of the English words like only, other etc. In all such cases English meaning should be set out in footnotes.

A translator has to take into account the above major areas of complexities in which English and Malay languages mismatch and then look deeper into the English context and deliver the exact words in Malay. In cases of the addition of extra words or near equivalents, some explanatory footnotes ought to be provided.