English-Bahasa Melayu translation

Translating English to Bahasa Melayu is quite difficult. Currently I am volunterring to be one of the translator for Ubuntu’s The Dapper Drake project and it seems that I have lost the skill of translating English to my mother tongue. I just realised all this while I don’t call computer gadgets in Bahasa, but English. I never once called a mouse as ‘tetikus’ and so forth. O wait, last time I referred computer stuffs in Bahasa was in my Friendster blog. Which is way months ago, before this blog exist.

With the help from my master cry4freedom, a widely used dictionary in Malaysia had been downloaded and I used it a lot in helping me to translate English to Malay. The software is called Al-Yassir. If anyone interested to download it, scribble it in comment area since the file size is 59MB, pretty big eh? Ok. Honestly, I don’t want to upload it if nobody wants it. What’s the point innit?

Right. Here’s one of the challenge, I had taken an hour to translate this;

alihbahasaubuntu2.jpg

I asked my friends, google, etc. I just do not know what ‘under score’ is called in Malay. But my friend gave me an idea and I finally translate ‘under score’ as ‘garis bawah’. Whew. Thank you Halwani.

Another challange; click the link below:

alihbahasaubuntu.jpg

Number 38: Acces denied. Do I translate it correctly? Is it ‘laluan dihalang’ or ‘tiada kebenaran masuk’? I can feel my brain cracks a bit as I was doing this translation job.

Number 37: I think I did it correctly. However, you can correct me if I am wrong

Number 38: This one is tricky. Nothing done. Is it ‘tiada apa dilakukan’? or ‘tiada tindakan dibuat’?
—–

OK. My humble point to volunteer in this project is to lift up my mother tongue’s notion of correctness, but I think I end up messing it. By the way, I had fun chatting with my master about Malay translation of computer terms.

🙂

PS: I am so confused with ‘hard disk’ and ‘hardware’. I thought it is ‘cakera keras’. I am totally wrong. Hardware is ‘perkakas keras’. *sigh*

20 thoughts on “English-Bahasa Melayu translation”

very interesting project …

Wah! Good luck in your translation.
Access denied? Hmm very tricky indeed. Maybe Tiada kebenaran Akses. Me think Access has been akses-sed (melayukan). If u have friends in Malaysia (i know you do), ask them to get you Kamus Dewan. That’s the very reliable dictionary.

When I was working in TV3 as translator, we used that dict. I remembered i translated ‘chief staff’ into ‘ketua staf’ when actual word for it is ‘pegawai turus’ huhu. That’s the last time i did subtitle for ‘Commander in Chief’.

Selamat Hari Raya!!! Next time you ‘climb up’ north, drop me a line. mana tau nak jalan2 ke highland. Or sesat and need a place to crash ke, no worry.

syada+khairyn:

LOL. I thought I’m going to uplift bahasa but I think I end up screwing it. Thanks for the tip khairyn. I found Kamus Dewan online. Less weight, and free! I think you should keep on doing the translation, perhaps for movies. I found the subtitles in GSC&TGV doesn’t suit the context.

There’s an amusing excerpt by one of my lovely friend in her blog (she’s in NZ) which goes:

[Nada and I just finished watching ‘the da vinci code’…it was hilarious…the movie’s not, the subtitles are…who does all the translating, anyway?…the subtitles were ridiculous…nada and I were laughing our heads off reading them…when the characters say ‘shit!’, the subtitle says ‘tahi!’… ‘damn!’ becomes ‘haram!’ and when sir leigh teabing says to remy, “we should toast our victory” the subtitle reads “kita patut memberi roti bakar….”, when Langdon says that “I pray that Jesus would keep me alive…” the subtitle says “saya berharap jesus akan menendang…” it’s ‘keep’, not ‘kick’, ace! Reminds me of a subtitle that I came across years ago…the actor says “we will begin shooting the movie…” and the subtitle goes “kita akan mula menembak filem ini”]

Haha~and that motivates me to translate for ubuntu.

salam.nice blog and brilliant project u have here. would be keen to join our idea to bring our Bahasa back to glory~~~

I need help to transalte the following to english:

Perusahaan ini akan saya jerat dalam Hukum Undang-Undang yang berlaku di Indonesia, apabila ada kecurangan Domisili, NPWP, SIUP, SK Kehakiman, TDP adan PKP apabila Perusahaan Lokal dan ke BKPM apabila PMA.

Dan saya akan koordinasi dengan Perindag Jakarta dan juga BKPM Daerah dan BKPM Pusat begitu juga dengan Perpajakan

Dan waktu pemanggilan saya ke Hotel Lee Mariden, saya anggap ada indikasi kecurangan investasi di indonesia.

Thanks, Ashu Jain

Dear A Jain,

I am sorry but the language you asked me to translate is Indonesian. I do not learn it formally, although I understand most of it and linguistically it is very much similar to Bahasa Melayu Malaysia, actually there are terms that has totally different meaning.

However, this is my interpretation for the above excerpt:
I will drag this industry to Indonesian authoritative law, when there is domicile crime, NPWP, SIUP, SK justice, TDP and PKP when a local industry to BKPM when PMA (I myself don’t get the last bit of the sentence).

And I will coordinate with “Perindag Jakarta” and district BKPM and Central BKPM as well as tax system.

And when I call to Hotel Lee Meriden, I assume there is an indication of investment corrupcy in Indonesia.
________________

Hope that will help.