Indonesia won't be lost in translation
'Translation is what has since time immemorial interconnected cultures," Indonesia-based translator John H. McGlynn says. "Without translation nothing would happen. And in this day and age when the global economy and the internet are linking us together, there is still a great need for it."
McGlynn, who was in Perth at Murdoch University last week to give a lecture entitled Why Translation Matters and to launch 25 titles in Lontar's Modern Library of Indonesia series, says English is now the dominant world language.
"It's become the lingua franca of the world," he says. "If you don't speak that language, you're just shunted aside."
That's partly why, in 1987, McGlynn co-founded the Jakarta-based Lontar Foundation, a non-profit organisation whose main aim is to promote Indonesian literature and culture by translating Indonesian texts into English.
"If Indonesia wants to put itself forward not only on the economic stage but also on the cultural stage then it has to present itself in English," he says. "It's not likely that most of Australia is going to learn Indonesian. So Lontar is trying to put together a canon of Indonesian literature in English that can be used as a guide post for the teaching of Indonesian language and literature."
US-born McGlynn, who first visited Indonesia in 1976 on a student scholarship, says he also wants to offer a more balanced view of Indonesia.
"At that time most of the news that was reported about Indonesia in the foreign press was highly negative," he says. "Not that there was not truth in the reports. But there was never a balance between what was reported and other aspects of Indonesia. I and my colleagues (Indonesian writers Goenawan Mohamad, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Umar Kayam, and Subagio Sastrowardoyo) felt we had to find some way to put an alternative view out there. And we thought that the best way would be through literature. It shows the blemishes as well but you get a much more nuanced picture of Indonesian culture through literature than you do through the mass media."
Indonesian literature has a complex history, owing to the country having been both an early international centre for trade and a former colony of the Netherlands and being occupied by Japan. The resulting influences have left their mark on a literature that is nevertheless distinctive and divided into various overlapping periods or generations, such as the Pujangga Lama (traditional literature), Angkatan Pujangga Baru (new literature) and the Angkatan 2000-an (the generation of the 2000s).
Today, high-profile Indonesian authors are writing quality literature in Bahasa Indonesia. One of them is Leila S. Chudori, some of whose short stories have been translated by McGlynn for the collection The Longest Kiss, part of the Modern Library of Indonesia project.
"This project is a very important thing because there are so many good writers in Indonesia but they are only known to Indonesian readers," Chudori, a senior editor at Indonesia's influential Tempo magazine, says.
McGlynn is now in the process of translating Chudori's recently published first novel, Pulang, which is already in its third printing.
"You have to have a very good translator," Chudori says. "John is one of the best. He's very meticulous in his choice of words."
McGlynn says he always tries to produce a felicitous translation that is true to the original.
"There is a danger of being too free in one's translation and misinterpreting the intent of the original," he adds. "But, by and large, most translators try their best to express an author's point of view. Yes, you might lose something in the translation. But you gain a lot more by the attempt."
For more, visit lontar.org.
