Bedbugs and Grasshoppers: Translation, Myth and the Becomingof the Nation-State

Yoke-Sum Wong*

Abstract How is literally, a nation translated? This paperlooks at translation practices as historical process andpractice rather than submitting them to causal explanationswith respect to the constitution of the nation-state. Ittakes as its starting point, two contemporary Malay wordsnegeri (province, state) and negara (country, nation-state)and how they once had opposing definitions. Working withover three hundred years of dictionaries and lexicons,mainly English-Malay dictionaries, the words negeri andnegara were translated and defined very differently fromcurrent dictionaries – nor are they clarified today. Whatthen happened to these words and how were they understoodand translated over time, and in what possible contextwithin the language of post-colonial nation-state formation?What do the processes of translation offer or convey thatdisrupts the singularity of nations and nationalism?Writings on translation do not necessarily shed any furtherclarity but they offer a space in which we can think abouttranslating practices and what they enact in the narrativeof the nation.

*****

Miracles

And what could Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, more popularly

known as Munshi Abdullah (1797-1854), Malay scribe,

translator, language teacher, and friend to the Dutch and

British Administrators, as well as the various European and* Yoke-Sum Wong is Lecturer in History, Lancaster University.

1

American Missionaries, have observed when he supposedly

arrived in the new port settlement of Singapore on June,

1819,1 four months after the British had founded it – and

during the decades after.2 In the early pages of his

memoirs, Hikayat Abdullah or The Chronicles of Abdullah, started

around 1840, twenty years after his first visit to

Singapore, Munshi Abdullah writes:

But especially in our present time since the founding

of Singapore, the grasshoppers have become eagles, and

bedbugs are tortoises, and earthworms are

serpents/dragons. Such wonders have come to pass

through the influence of the world's wealth. Despite

being ignorant and despised, one who possesses wealth

will be regarded as clever and highly respected; yet if

one is clever and highly respected, yet penniless, he

will be held in low regard. 3

What then was this marvellous sorcery – of grasshoppers

turning into eagles, and bedbugs into tortoises? What was

the nature and cosmology of change as observed by a native

scribe as he witnessed the transformations in Singapore? In

2

the Hikayat, Munshi Abdullah uses two Malay verbs (among

others) to speak of the founding, and they are ‘membuka’

(open) and ‘menjadi’ (become). How does one open a place and

make it become? How can a place be translated and evolve

into a country, a nation, a state?

Munshi Abdullah was of course speaking figuratively,

grasping Singapore’s rapid transformations before him in

metaphor, translating change through the imagery of insects

and animals, alluding to size as well as physicality -- and

in language that could perhaps convey more, and to a wider

audience than colonial documents replete with statistics

ever could. Translation here is intra-linguistic and

conceptual though any inter-linguistic translation would

involve a conceptual shift rather than unquestioning and

perfect resemblance. How then can translation practices

particularly in lexicons and dictionaries contribute to the

way we look at historical processes, especially in the

making of nation-states and geo-political substance? This

article looks at translation practices in bi-lingual

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lexicons and dictionaries as historical process and practice

rather than submitting them to causal explanations. Though

this does not constitute the main theme of the paper, I want

to suggest that translation is an allegorical act – that is,

when referring to the Greek roots of allos (other) and

agoreuien (to speak), translation as allegory is letting the

other speak. Translation is where the other erupts.

That translation is allegorical suggests that translation

works as a reference to a simultaneous structure and content

of events and ideas. The allegory however, is also a

technique of literature and a method of criticism – and this

is where the writings on translation by Roman Jakobsen,

Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot and Milan Kundera become

significant as a means of negotiating linguistic encounters

and the enactments of meaning. I do not suggest that they

provide any answers to my inquiry but rather that they might

provoke discussion on how we may interpret events and texts

– and that there remains some ambiguous element beyond our

sense-making especially when it concerns language in the

4

colonial encounter and colonial historiography. If our

reality is constituted by language – and our truth-

enactments are linguistically negotiated, then we must ask

how translation serves to complicate meaning rather than

enlighten it. My study of bi-lingual dictionaries, lexicons

and handbooks compiled over three hundred years in the Malay

world was prompted by two words in Malay: ‘negeri’ meaning

state or province, and ‘negara’, meaning country or nation-

state. What intrigues here is how these two words have

actually exchanged definitions over time -- though the

outcome remains fairly ambiguous. Working with mainly

dictionaries and language manuals, my primary focus is

English-Malay translations although I have also drawn from

Dutch, French and Indonesian sources. What then are the

processes that mark the spatial transformation of a word and

its definition over time? How does, literally, a transposition

occur when one meaning is exchanged for another? How do

terms and concepts get translated over time and space – in

this case two Malay words, and is it possible to map the

conceptual reversals? Was it merely a mistake in the

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original translation, carelessness, orientalist hubris or

the workings of colonial hegemony?

Translation practices in the colonial world cannot be

reduced to conscious or unconscious acts of power and

ideology alone. Much credit is due to the post-colonial

scholars who have drawn our attention to the ideological or

discursive imposition – rather than the trans-position – of

one idea for another or one linguistic system for another.

However the ideological argument is often premised on

polarities of power, and appears not to allow for the agency

of language, and the slippages of language, its

transformations and interpretation.4 In a world, such as the

Malay Archipelago, spaces constituted by a multi-racial

population of emigrants, settlers, traders as well as the

natives, language had to find its own way towards

communication -- and dictionaries were the signposts.

Encyclopedic or classificatory acts they may be, the

dictionaries also enabled the contextual making of sense in

a foreign world and of foreign others. Communication became

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possible rather than perfected – finding expression but not

precision of meaning or truth. It is the possibilities,

found in the discursive gaps and spaces that enable

polysemy. As Maurice Blanchot writes, the encyclopedic act

involved in the translating process is the bringing into

‘work’ of difference. My interest in translation is what it

does when it is carried out – what it exposes as well as

conceals, how it confuses and much as it clarifies, the

effects of the translating process, and what it leaves

behind. Writings on translation may raise questions about

the translating experience and its influences on state-

formation and here I mean experience in the “active and

processual connotation” of exploration and inquiry.5 As much

as the nation is and in translation, is the outcome of

translation -- how is the nation translated begs greater

attention here and how do we conceive of a nation through

translation? The history of the translated words concerned

is not meant to be presented here as a teleology of nation-

making or state-formation. It is hoped instead, it might map

a picture of a changing geo-political world and its

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epistemological shifts -- and the becoming of the nation-

state.

The Spaces of The Malay World

Where then – rather than what – is the Malay language if we

are to survey the spaces of language and their

transformations? In 1701, the sea captain and trader,

Thomas Bowrey dedicated to the Court of Directors of the

East India Company, A Dictionary of English and Malayo.6 The

dictionary, the first of its kind in English, comprised of

word lists and a number of English-Malay dialogues to

facilitate the merchant-trader, was compiled and written by

Bowrey who had spent nineteen years navigating and trading

in the East Indies including the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra,

Borneo, Bantam, Batavia and other parts of Java. The work

had begun in 1688, and was written on a long journey on ‘The

Bangala Merchant’ from Madras to England. It is significant

that Bowrey states that it was written ‘without assistance’

from ‘prevaricating’ interpreters and that it is independent

of Dutch translations as the Dutch presence in the region

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then could not be ignored. The work, as Bowrey claims, was

undertaken for the promotion of trade in a region he

describes as

The Peninsula beyond the Ganges stretching down to

Johor which is the extreme Southern Point, and is the

most Southern Point of land in Asia, is generally

called and known by the name of the Malayo Country, and

very probably with great reason, it retaining to this

day the Malayo Language, as the Mother Tongue, and

general Language of the Country.

The land conjured up here refers specifically to the Malay

Peninsula. Bowrey, however, goes on to make a distinction

between where the ‘true’ Malayo language is spoken and where

it is a Basa Dagang (bahasa dagang) or trading language.7

Where Malay is the lingua franca of trade, the space

stretches further, comprising ‘the Islands of Sumatra, Java,

Borneo, Macassar, Balee, Cumbava, Sallater, Bootoon, Booro,

Ceram, the Moluccus, and innumerable other islands’ – places

in which other variations and lesser forms of Malay are

spoken.

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Over a hundred years later, William Marsden’s comprehensive

1812 A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language offers a more

extensive geographical delineation that shifts the space of

the Malayan language from a peninsula to an archipelago:8

The MALAYAN, or, according to the pronunciation of the

natives, the Melayu language ….prevails throughout a

very extensive portion of what is vaguely termed the

East-Indies, including the the southern part of the

peninsula beyond the Ganges, now bearing the name of

the MALAYAN peninsula, together with the islands of

SUMATRA, JAVA, BORNEO, CELEBES and innumerable others,

as far to the eastwards as the MOLUCCAS, emphatically

termed the Spice-islands, to the southward, as the

island of TIMOR, and to the northward, as the

PHILLIPINES; forming collectively the MALAYAN

archipelago.

While it is quite clear, from William Marsden’s introduction

to his dictionary, that Bowrey’s text is influential,

Marsden refuses to separate the ‘true Malay’ from the

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‘trading Malay’, preferring the general category of the

Malayan language. Marsden however goes further to specify

and detail the use of the Malayan language in “the districts

bordering on the sea-coasts and the mouths and banks of

navigable rivers” and likening its character to the dialect

of Italian or Catalonian spoken along the shores of the

Mediterranean wherever trade is carried out. What leaps out

in Marsden’s introduction is the more palpable connection

between trade and territory. Where Bowrey’s introduction

refers to trade justifications and the conduct of business

transactions between foreigner and native, Marsden goes on

to praise the “enterprising and commercial character of the

people, who either by force of arms or in the spirit of

mercantile other pursuits” had extended their geographical

reach.9 Certainly in 1801, James Howison’s dictionary, A

Dictionary of the Malay Tongue as Spoken in the Peninsula of Malacca, etc. in

Two Parts draws much from Bowrey but refers to the land of

the Malay as Malacca rather than connect the Malay land to

the entire peninsula, its surrounding islands and the

various sultanates within it. Howison also stresses the

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mercantile imperative and the objectives of communication as

an “object of national importance” especially since on

August 11th, 1786, Francis Light had established Penang as a

British settlement. The increasing Dutch presence in the

region, the Napoleonic wars, and the imperatives of securing

ports friendly to English imperial interests in the world of

geo-politics in the late eighteenth century and the early

nineteenth century would have influenced and constituted

lexicographical practices – which in turn would have re-

defined the nature of the Malay lands into a modern

political entity that is the nation-state.

Peninsula, archipelago, or something more analogous – was

there ever a Malay country or the Malay lands -- and is it

simply where the Malayan language is spoken? Thomas Bowrey

was not an Orientalist scholar like William Marsden, and his

trade dealings in the Malay Peninsula proper would have

possibly been limited to Johor at the tip of the peninsula,

and primarily to Malacca which the Dutch acquired from the

Portuguese in 1642 through conquest. Ironically Bowrey’s

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word list and dialogues might even be considered ‘vulgar

Malay’ given his experiences with the language which would

have been primarily self-taught and negotiated through

trade.10 As for the ‘true’ Malayan language, Marsden and

other scholars detail the intricate blending of influences

via centuries of migration, conquests, and commercial

intercourse, and link the roots of the language to Sanskrit,

Persian and Arabic “modifying and regenerating even where it

did not create.”11 John Leyden even argues that the origins

cannot be reduced to the pinball effect from Sumatra but

that the language must be seen in light of the Indo-Chinese

influences and states that “neither the Malay lingua franca

of commerce nor any of the maritime dialects of Malayu

existed previous to the era of Mohammed, in a state similar

to that in which they appear at present.”12 W.E. Maxwell a

Malay scholar, Civil Servant and later, Acting-Governor of

the Straits Settlements (1893-1894) argues that ‘dialectical

peculiarities are so abundant in Malay’ that local

encounters with other languages produce unique expressions

that are impossible to generalize and that ‘Malay is spoken

13

in perfection in places where the natives speak no other

tongue.”13 Drawing from the hagiographical stories of the

classical Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Annals,14 R. J. Wilkinson, a

member of the Straits Settlements Civil Service, wrote in

his 1901 A Malay-English Dictionary that certain Malay sultanates,

eg. The Sultan of Kedah, even believed in the extraordinary

lineage to mermaids and Alexander the Great. As fantastical

as such genealogies are, they convey a sense of historical

leap that is not far from Abdullah’s metaphorical magicality

of bedbugs that turn into tortoises.

The Dictionaries

In his introduction to the 1984 reprint of William Marsden’s

dictionary, Russell Jones makes a distinction between a word

list and a dictionary, pointing out that dictionaries proper

were not always in existence. The earliest Malay word list

is a fifteenth-century Chinese-Malay list from Malacca

containing 482 entries written wholly in Chinese with a

transcription of the sound. The better known word list

familiar to scholars like Marsden is the Italian-Malay list,

14

compiled around 1521 from the Eastern Islands of present day

Indonesia by an Italian circumnavigator and companion to

Magellan, Antonio Pigafetta, and contains about 462 items.

Despite the conquest of Malacca, no Portuguese-Malay lists

are known before the sixteenth century though by the end of

the same century, with the increased presence of Dutch trade

in the East Indies, a list of 156 items was put together

including twenty-three Javanese words.15 The first

comprehensive list of words along with an explanation in a

foreign language was compiled by the Dutchman Casper Wiltens

and published in 1623. I want to turn, however a-

chronologically, to William Marsden’s 1812 dictionary as my

starting point in discussing the translation of the two

words ‘negeri’ and ‘negara’.

William Marsden (1754-1836) spent eight years in Sumatra

studying the Malayan language, used widely in the region

covering Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsular, Borneo and the

surrounding islands. Indispensable to British and Dutch

administrators, officers and merchants alike, Marsden’s 1812

15

A Dictionary and Grammar of The Malayan Language was then the most

comprehensive text of its kind and it covered not only the

history of the region, but also included a linguistic guide

to the characters and the rules for the Malay characters and

grammar. Though influenced by Latin particularly when

explaining the grammar, the dictionary was alphabetically

arranged in so far as it followed the Malay Jawi form which

was derived from Arabic.16 Furthermore, the pronunciation

was fixed to the Peninsular Malay dialect. The pronunciation

was confirmed by John Crawfurd, the second Resident-General

of Singapore in 1824 who informed Marsden in a letter that

“the best Malay is that embodied and explained in [your]

dictionary, and all the differences are little else than

local and provincial.”17 Marsden’s dictionary was read

avidly by anyone who was interested in the region, and in

particular, by officials and statesmen such as Sir Stamford

Raffles and John Crawfurd who cited Marsden’s dictionary as

the main reference for negotiating the terms to secure the

island of Singapore between 1819 and 1824. For Marsden,

following the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty in 1824 which

16

divided the archipelago among the British and the Dutch --

the ultimate honour came when the Dutch themselves adopted

the use of his dictionary and had it translated into Dutch.

In Marsden’s dictionary, ‘negri’ (spelt negeri as well) contains

an extensive range of meanings -- “a city, town; a country;

province, district.” Depending on the spatial context of

use, the same word can be renegotiated in many different

ways. Negri Dunia, for instance, means “kingdoms of the

world”, and what is interesting here is the recognition of

the world, though by whom – and we are not precisely certain

how far this world extends -- and to what extent is this the

same world that Marsden, an eighteenth-century administrator

and scholar from England might have known of? The other

given definitions, as a phrase, however indicate that negri

is quite specific, and the world of the Sumatrans from on

Marsden depended for his philological studies might possibly

be constituted from literature, myths, trading contacts,

conceptions of a cohesive community, a cosmology of land,

water and space, or even a society with proven ruling

17

institutions and particular structures of power such as

sultanates and caliphates. In the eighteenth century, trade

was competitive in that region – not only among the

Europeans, Chinese and the Arabs, but also among the large

number of different ethnic groups in the archipelago for

example, the Javanese, Bugis, Achenese, Minangkabaus, Dayaks

-- but it seems, not every group was accorded the status of

negri.

There is Negri Cina, or China – the Kingdom of China was more

than a powerful presence in the region due to the fifteenth

century Ming Voyages (1405-1433) and eventually the settling

of Chinese traders in Java and Sumatra. There is Negri Rum or

Constantinople, Turkey – likely because of the spread of

Islam to the archipelago through Arab traders. There is also

Negri Timur – literally meaning East country – perhaps

referring to Timor, or to Java and the rest of the islands.

According to Marsden, negri is absolute if used by the Sumatrans to the

Kingdom of Minangkabau, and amongst those connected with Europeans, to

their mother country, as England or Holland. So kapal negri (kapal

18

meaning ship) would automatically be a European ship.

Interestingly, in an 1884 Dutch-Malay dictionary by a Dr. J.

Pejnappel,18 ‘kapal iboe nageri’ is translated as ‘ships

belonging to Arabs’. The literal translation is the ship of

the motherland or homeland indicating the historic direct

connection between the Arabs and the Malays, and the

conversion of the Malay peoples to Islam back in the

fourteenth century.

‘Negara’ in William Marsden’s dictionary of 1812, is defined

as “a province and a district”. In Bowrey’s 1701 dictionary,

negree or benoa is a ‘country’. ‘Negara’ does not even exist.

The word benoa (spelt ‘benua’ today) however is translated

as continent in contemporary Malay but for Bowrey and

Marsden, benoa also refers to a ‘region and land’ or ‘a land

that is inhabited and occupied’.19 Oddly, the like-sounding

Polynesian word ‘fenua’ is land but also more, encompassing

‘native’, ‘earth’ as well as “‘placenta’, the nourishing

envelope out of which one was born.”20 John Howison‘s 1801

dictionary translation is quite similar to Bowrey’s except a

19

continent is translated as ‘tana besar’ (large land – tana or

tanah meaning land or earth) and a province is translated as

‘caum’ (modern day, ‘kaum’) which alludes to an ethnic

group, with a nod towards the familial -- or tribe. However,

it is the 1875 Malay-French dictionary by L’abbé P. Favre

that translates nagara as ‘pays’ and nagari as ‘ville’, ‘cite’

but also as ‘contree’, ‘pays’, and ‘royaume’21.‘Le Pays des Homes

Blancs’ or ‘L’europe’ is Nagari orang putih (literally, country of

the white people or Europe). Dr. Pejnappel’s dictionary

interestingly does translate nakara as ‘voor’, ‘ook’ and

nageri as ‘stad’ and ‘staat’ which cohere with current

translations though other Dutch translations are less

clear.22 Certainly a number of dictionaries by British

scholars such as R. J. Wilkinson and R.O. Winstedt whose

numerous and revised editions of their books published

during the twentieth century do not offer us any further

clarity.

Among the many dictionaries and language books available to

us, the eminent Malay scholar, Sir Richard O. Winstedt

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produced a prolific number of books, and dictionaries

throughout his career since 1913.23 However, in his

dictionaries, Winstedt rarely makes any distinction between

negeri and negara, and both words continue to be translated

as country, settlement or city-state with certain variations

though none come close to the certainty of definition we

have today.24 Yet even as late as 1957, the year of Malaya’s

independence from British rule, negara is translated as a

‘county’ and it is only in 1959, Winstedt begins to refer to

negara as country and state while negeri has become land,

settlement – as well as still a country. In 1966, a

dictionary by Zainal Abidin bin Safarwan, a Malay

lexicographer, translates negara as state and republic while

negeri is land of one’s birth, which possibly raises some

questions regarding the conceptual idea of negeri and the

connection to origins, blood and belonging and therefore,

explains the varied definitions from town and settlement to

country – as long as one identifies with ‘home’.25 R. J.

Wilkinson’s highly respected 1901 A Malay-English Dictionary is

known as one of the most authoritative and reliable works on

21

the Malay language, drawing its meanings and uses from a

breathtaking list of classical Malay sources, customary law

books, and other scholarly works including previous

dictionaries.26 As the Malay preface to a 1985 reprint says,

with respectful caution, the dictionary is a classic and

indispensable text with entries that are wide in description

and expansive in meaning.27 Although cited as a path-

breaking text, some scholars doubt Wilkinson’s etymological

reliability and are critical of the inadequacy of the

derived forms.28 Wilkinson, however, presents us with the

most interesting translation and explanation of negeri and

negara, and that is simply negeri is at once, a settlement,

city–state, town, or land -- and negara is a poetic vibrant

of negeri, common in classical Malay verse. Inspired perhaps

by allusion and word-play, another variant exists. There is

‘nekara’ or a drum which formed part of the regalia integral

to the rituals of coronation of the Sultan in the Malay

world. The Sultan could not be crowned or recognized as

ruler with status and power without the ensemble of key

items of which the nekara was constitutive – thus resounding

22

the tempo, of kingship. Negara appears derivative but it is

harmonious, and musical. Often described as soft, and

smooth as well as pleasing to the ear,29 the Malay language

has been called the Italian or the Hindustani of the East.30

Well-suited to verses and poetry – it is significant that in

the word negara, we have literally, the poetic birth of a

nation – its emergence found in rhyme and rhythm.

I do not wish to dwell on the exhaustive list of

dictionaries, the word entries or the precision or the

reliability of the translations. The truth of meaning

interests me less than the processes in which words shed

their meanings and assume new ones – or in this case,

exchanged their meaning over time with the emergence of

geographical exploration, new political and economic forms

of governance and global order. Today, negara is a country

and a nation state with a society of people ruled by a

sovereign government within a defined territory. Negeri is at

once the land of one’s birth but also a state or a province

ruled by a sultan, a governor or a local government and

23

defined within federal terms. What then happened over the

course of 300 years? How is negara conceived as a

country/nation-state now and how has negeri receded into

something secondary like a province or a state?

And What is a Country if it is not a Nation?

So Clifford Geertz asks. Nation-states -- particularly post-

independent nation-states, former colonies of the Dutch and

the British, were not naturally forged by providence.

Indonesia was once fragmented kingdoms, “a competitive

diversity” – the Dutch in 350 years gathered up the peoples

one by one through conquest, and negotiation, to unify what

we have today, a purified, collective unit called Indonesia

– a behemoth of a country which constantly feels on the

verge of disintegration in the religious and political

tensions of present times. The irony of such imagined

communities (a useful concept here) of course, is that it

looks back to history not as a Malay, a Minangkabau, a

Sumatran, a Bugis, a Javanese -- or a Balinese or as

Nusantara (Malay islands) -- but as an Indonesian. Playing

24

upon Benedict Anderson‘s title of his magisterial text,

there is a reason for the past tense of “imagine” in

Imagined Communities. Consider the different picture offered

if that now famous phrase was in the present, and

reconceived as Imagine Communities. Nations do not simply

imagine themselves into the entity they are now, but it is

more possible that imagination works best, and more

successfully, in hindsight.

Let us return to the Sejarah Melayu or The Malay Annals. Jean-Luc

Nancy writes that “nothing is more common to the members of

a community, in principle, than a myth, or a group of

myths.”31 In fact, myth and community are one:

Myth arises only from a community and for it; they

engender one another, infinitely and immediately

nothing is more common, nothing is more absolutely

common than myth. Dialogics can only occur between

those who are situated in the space of exchange or the

symbolic function or both. It is myth that arranges the

spaces, and/or symbolizes. Myth works out the shares

25

and divisions that distributes a community and

distinguish it for itself, articulating it within

itself.32

Putting aside lineages of the fantastical such as mermaids,

Macedonian warriors and Noah’s ark, the ancient Malay world

is not reducible to the Malay Peninsula alone. Without

rehearsing the history, and prior to the Portuguese conquest

of Malacca in 1511, it is generally accepted that the

Minangkabau kingdom,33 located in the heart of the island of

Sumatra, is the original home of the Malays.34 There – it is

told -- at the mouths of the Palembang and Jambi rivers, a

few people from Noah’s ark disembarked after the flood.35

And there is more, for what follows involves not only the

line of descent from Alexander the Great but also a union

with a mermaid whose children returned to land to claim

their rightful heritage. If there is a fame to the

Minangkabau it “may be due to the fact that it was the

mother country whence Malay colonies descended in all

directions to the sea rather than to any actual dominion

which it exercised over other districts.”36 With paramount

26

jurisdiction over the entire island, the Minangkabau kingdom

had sent forth settlers especially across the straits

towards the Malay peninsula. In the Malay Annals, the Malay

peoples had first settled in Palembang, the Riau-Lingga

Archipelago, then in Singapore, and finally in Malacca where

contact was made with foreign traders from China and Persia

in the fourteenth century. As early as the twelfth century,

Singa-pura was founded by the Minangkabau who migrated to

ujong tanah or ‘the tip of the land’ on the Malay Peninsula.

What follows is often epic in narration with the rise and

fall of prosperous kingdoms, with wars between the

Minangkabau and the Majapahit kingdoms, the latter being from

the island of Java – though it is argued that language-wise,

the Minangkabau too have their origins in Java.37 Myth and

narrative are not similar though “narrative may be the very

soul of myth” – and both are entwined in the narrative of

the nation.38 And with myth, Nancy reminds us, echoing

Claude Levi-Strauss, the passing of time takes shape,

“[myth] reveals the community to itself and founds it”39 --

27

the concoction of the Malay language and its geographical

spread constituted by bricolage and amorphous plurality.40

Negara, and its contemporary definition as kingdom and

country – was in Javanese, not only a town or a city, but

also a palace, a court, residence, a capital, state or

realm.41 Negara alludes to a space that is peopled, citizened

and ruled. Negara is a hardened, more politically

stabilized and singular entity that feels, and connotes the

more solid and substantial. Negara has also become home.

Negara is a synecdochical relationship that says that the

local is the national, a greater unit which must unite the

fragmented ones – your kingdom is your country, and vice

versa, even if your kingdom is your attap-hut. The crucial

element here is unproblematic convertibility – you are your

country. Negara translates political structure into poetic

imagery and symbolism. Negara has become the mythological

sign of communitarianism which gathers up and enfolds (in

some cases, kicking and screaming) the differential elements

into a sense or a consciousness of national identity which

28

tells its multitudes, Indonesia is also the sum of its

parts, the people: the Javanese, the Sumatrans, the

Balinese, the Chinese, and so on. Negara has the aura of

destiny and history – it is inevitable. To quote Clifford

Geertz again, what then is a culture if is it is not a

consensus?

And time turns into space.42 Myth transforms meaning into

form. Indonesia as well as Malaysia is also Tanah Melayu.

Tanah meaning soil and land, depending on phrasing and

context, is a word not taken lightly in the Malay world –

nor bumi which can be translated as earth or soil.43 The word

Tanah enfolds a mythical community, the idea of shared blood

and culture, and later, religion. Tanah Melayu is not only

the country of the Malays but also recalls nusantara –

spanning across land and water to enfold present-day

Malaysia, Singapore, Borneo, Indonesia and its islands, and

more. The word in Malay for homeland or country is Tanahair.

Tanah as stated previously is land/soil, and air is water –

tanahair literally conjoins land and water as home and

29

belonging, and reconceptualizes the spatial hardness of

nation-states. For the Minangkabau peoples, the old adage

goes “Bodoh orang Minangkabau yang tiyada menumpu laut” or ‘foolish

is the Minangkabau who does not tread on the sea” referring

to the wealth and opportunity found beyond the land and the

necessity of crossing seas.

Most current references to nationality and country are

mostly solid and land-based, e.g. fatherland/motherland,

homeland. The inhabitants of the Malay peninsular had once

described themselves in elemental terms with respect to east

and west, and the winds which brought the ships in and out.

Hardly referring to themselves as Malays or ‘Orang Melayu’,

they considered themselves the ‘leeward people’ or the

‘people beneath the wind’ (orang di bawah angin) as opposed to

the Arabs who were the ‘windward peoples’ or ‘above the

wind’ (orang di atas angin).44 Water or the slippery and

amorphous body that we call the sea, it appears, is sublated

in our terms of national endearment. The reduction of

nation-states to land-based spaces erases from historical

30

discourses, groups of people whose existence are bound up

with the seas. The ‘Orang Laut’ or sea gypsies/peoples-of-

the-sea, such as the Dayaks of Borneo and Celebes, were the

indigenous seafarers, harvesters and maritime traders who

once plied the archipelago waters – though sometimes

perceived as pirates.45 Consider as well, Greg Dening’s ‘Sea

People’ – the way-finders who lived in the Sea of Islands

(Oceania) and who for three thousand years “made a Homeland

of the sea enclosed by Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.” 46 The Sea

People, Dening tells us, were guided by stars and propelled

by the winds, and whose relationship with land is temporary

before the water calls again. The language of settlement so

often connotes teleological migratory movement, from the sea

to the land as the historical destiny of modern state

formation and citizenship. It is also evolutionary, nation-

states are Darwinian – people are always seeking land and

societies are land-based. Water, seen from the vantage point

of land, is always peripheral to land, the passage that must

be traversed to reach land – an interruption. The seas are

not prosthetic to land; land and sea are usually separate

31

entities. Where does the sea end and the land begin -- and

what then is the basis of territoriality? Even the

international law of the sea drowns itself in the language

and terms of territoriality, and the discourses of terra

firma, i.e. the first chapter in the UN Document governing

the law of the sea, “Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone”

where the zone is marked by a line on the sea bed. It is of

course, not what is above it, but what is below the water

that matters, and can be bordered -- the sea bed, the reefs,

etc. You cannot, after all, draw a chalk-mark on water -- a

curious kind of topos-centrism.

In the Hikayat Abdullah, the word Selat is usually translated as

the straits, a narrow passage of water connecting two seas

or large bodies of water. Selat refers here to Singapore, a

common reference in the nineteenth century among the native

speakers but particularly those who employ the ‘basa/bahasa

dagang’ (trade Malay).47 An explanation perhaps could lie in

the more generous metonymical perception of the region which

includes land and sea (rather than what separates) -- that

32

Singapore is merely part of the cluster of islands at the

nexus of three Straits -- the Straits of Johor, Malacca and

Sunda, and considered a possession of the Johor Sultanate.

But this is a cartographical palimpsest in which by the

magical trick of language and geo-political will, selat with

its multitudes of gathering ships and junks from the world

over heading for the strategic free port of Singapore,

materializes into -- and becomes the entity that we call

Singapore today. The rest of the landscape; the straits,

Malacca, the islets, surrounding islands are all written

over -- re-engraved as Singapore -- as all attention and

activity are focused on the new settlement, on land, as

mainland and the centre of commerce in the nineteenth

century.

And how has the word negeri transformed, and receded – and

then, reconstituted as “state” or “province”-- or something

akin to a lesser governing body? The contemporary Indonesian

and Malaysian dictionaries convey a more abstract feel to

the use of the word negeri today. Negeri is more fluid, more

33

conceptual – defying the physical space of a bounded

territory, of once prominent sultanates, transcending land

and water, binding ethnic ties, tribal memories of shared

culture and belonging. It is also the combination of origins

and birth-place. In today’s Malay, negeri comes across as

physically smaller and shapeless an entity, but part of

negara – and not the other way round. Perhaps because the

Dutch and English are no longer spread far and wide, and

they no longer constitute a significant part of the colonial

world as traders and colonists – for they too have receded

to their lands, pace their empires. Perhaps the Minangkabau

people, a matrilineal culture is now dispersed, scattered as

communities in Sumatra, Indonesia and primarily in the state

of Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia -- as part of a common federal

government and not distinct spatially delineated kingdoms

that were never this cohesive entity we call Malaysia today.

The results of over a 150 years of British presence and

rule, and the bureaucratic structures of governance which

delineated the Straits Settlements from the Federated and

Unfederated Malay states to the ambiguity of James Brooke’s

34

Borneo, produced confusing and often shifting compromises

over the nature of the Malayan society which would

constitute the independent nation-state of Malaya in 1957.

States and provinces, once defined by Sultanates become sub-

sets of the larger country, allegiances shift -- the citizen

is beholden to the elected national government and modernity

trumps monarchy and reduces it to an accessory. When certain

elements cease to be part of a historically defined

cosmology, or a colonial world, the concepts and definitions

cease to be useful, and must change. It is of course ironic

that government in Malay is “kerajaan” – with the root word

of “raja” signifying royalty, sultanates, kingdoms -- its

governing practices situated in monarchical rule. It is also

defined as “the state of having a raja.”48 Negeri as referent

to greater kingdoms, imperialism, trading and military

powers such as Europe, Constantinople or China is no longer

adequate in a world of presumably sovereign modern nation-

states. State formation renders once princely kingdoms to

symbolic appurtenances of the nation-state. As E.P Thompson,

35

echoing Marc Bloch, quotes “as the world changes, we must

learn to change our language and our terms.”49

Translations and Transgressions

Renato Poggioli contends that translation is akin to

decanting liquid from one vessel to another.50 We do not

merely deal here with European translations of the Malay

words to trace the historical geo-politics of the Malay

world how did negara take on the signification of negeri, and

the other way around. But the process of decanting here

demands that the character of the liquid changes in contact

with the properties of the vessel – thus changing the vessel

as well. The shape-shifting contours of negara must assume

the political nature of its times and the circumstances of a

post-colonial society. In the “Task of the Translator”,51

Walter Benjamin states that a text is untranslatable if it

is identical to truth and dogma. Translation is therefore

possible, only in the case of the plurality of languages.

The translation of one form to another always suffers the

loss of any idea of the pure form – or the idea of an

36

original language. It is in ‘fragmentation’ that language

evolves, bringing forward the original intent rather than

its resemblance – “incorporating the original’s mode of

signification…..towards linguistic complementation.”52

One can span a bewildering confusion of the histories and

translated definitions of negeri and negara in innumerable

lexicographical texts. We cannot for certain tell which word

translates to state, district, province, sultanate, kingdom,

country, and nation. Both words are possibly complementary –

and most of the dictionaries list the synonym for negara as

negeri and the other way around without clear distinctions.

What emerge from such etymological explorations are the

ambiguities and the frustration which belie the enterprise

of meaning-making, and our search for the clarity of form

and the singularity of truth. And if negeri and negara are

synonymous, recalling Benjamin, then negara is our

contemporary illumination of the ‘original’ – that which

renders a sense of the ‘original’ but as “fragments of a

greater language.”53 Negara echoes the ‘original’ but enfolds

37

the pomp and circumstance of the modern nation-state and

beyond. If Wilkinson is correct in asserting that negara is

a poetic form, then employing Hayden White’s reading of

Hegel on poetic expression, negara reconciles the universal

in the particular, and the abstract in the concrete.54 In

the case of negeri and negara, the shifting usages of the words

over time and space reach for the dream of communal

substance and solidness, even if what is referred to is

abstract and unbounded, connected through cultural memory,

mythical bloodlines and modern governing practices. If there

are acts of trangression here, it is in the syncopated gaps

of nation-making or nation-becoming -- and the impossibility

of unitary definition in translation becomes the testaments

betrayed and testaments affirmed in the ever assembling and

disassembling of the worlds we live in – and the fragile

substance of citizenship and nationality.55

In Roman Jakobson’s well-known discussion of the Italian

saying Italian traduttore, traditore or the “translator is a

betrayer”, or translation as traitorous,56 he traces the

38

word translation to the shared latin root of traditor, meaning

traitor and traduttore, meaning to transfer, bring over,

or/and surrender. But, asks Jakobson, “translator of what

messages? Betrayer of what values?”57 There is implied

wrongdoing here but also sacrifice, trickery and

dissemblance. Other variations of the latin translation

include: to ridicule, to parade, and to show up [as in a

person]. In engaging with Jakobson’s discussion, Ortega y

Gasset suggests that a wariness or fear exists of the

translator who "will place the [original] author in the

prison of normal expression; that is, he will betray him."58

I want to return to the word tanahair, that is

father/motherland or homeland, which, as stated before

should literally be translated as land/soil and water. That

tanahair is usually translated as homeland loses a certain

geographical resonance, the spread of the seas and the lands

which surround them if it must have universal intimations --

as well as local ones. Yet, if we now surrender to the

mythological reverberations of tanah and air, and to the

ancient landmasses of Tanah Melayu in present times when

39

religious affiliations share tense juxtapositions with

multiracialism, when sovereignty overwhelms historic ties,

more would indeed be lost.59 Betrayal -- or surrender, is

sometimes necessary.

So what then is surrendered? Given the range of explanations

in contemporary Malay dictionaries, the word ‘nation’

appears not to have an exact Malay equivalent that can be

translated in a single word. In a 1985 dictionary, nation

is defined as a large society with shared political

ambitions among its citizens.60 To nationalize, is to assume

the discursive paraphernalia of modern citizenship or

warganegara. National and the variants, such as

‘nationalization’ are spelt in the Malay vernacular as

nasional or kenasionalan – and ‘nationalism’ is translated as

cita-cita kebangsaan or literally, as ambitions of nationalism.

Yet this was not always so. Prior to the 1960s at least,

nation was usually translated as ‘bangsa’ which in turn was

translated as ‘race’ in Malay-English dictionaries,61 and

nationality was ‘bangsa-ku’ (my race).62 W.E. Maxwell defined

40

race as bangsa as well as asal which means ‘origins’.63 Nation

here is inextricably linked to race and despite the

political debates over the use of ‘ethnicity’, race

continues to be the preferred categorical description in

Southeast-Asia where multi-racialism resonates stronger than

multiculturalism, and primordial roots and loyalties linger.

The historical particularities of British Colonial rule in

the nineteenth century witnessed the emigration and the

resettlement of Chinese and Indians across the Malay

Peninsula, Singapore and Borneo, and produced a separate

category for the Malays as the original inhabitants of the

land. The Malays are bumiputera or princes/sons of the soil

who also happen to be Muslim.64 As part of the more than

complex negotiations for an independent Malaya, preferential

treatment was given to the bumiputera from education to the

politics of rule65 -- and such concessions were necessary

for maintaining a multiracial society and the privilege of

citizenship for all racial groups even if the objectives may

be disputed. It is hard to dismiss the relative success of

multiracialism in Malaysia despite the prevailing Muslim

41

identity of the nation. Some things are worth giving up and

losing.

But there is violence in such surrender too. The national

anthem of Malaysia invokes the natural paradox of blood and

life in its opening lines, negara-ku, tanah tumpahnya darah ku (my

country, the land where I shall pour my blood) -- but only

to be followed by life, rakyat hidup bersatu dan maju (the

citizens live in unity and in prosperity) to invoke the

corporeal body of nationhood that unites in patriotic

sacrifice to the land. It does not differentiate whose blood

– bumiputera or not. There are no double standards in pro

patria mori. While such translations which link nation to race

might be more or less the imposition of Western ideologies

of a certain period – Maurice Blanchot in engaging with

Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’ calls forth

the specter of the ‘dangerous other’ in the act of

translation.66 Recalling and paraphrasing Blanchot’s

“translating, the bringing into ‘work’ of difference”, can

42

we speak of translating as bringing into the ‘nation’ of

difference?67

For Maurice Blanchot, translation is the very play of

difference – the act alludes, dissimulates, reveals, and

accentuates it. Translation is, in fact, the very life of

this difference. It does not crystallize meaning but shines

upon the original but only to convey what is being

communicated rather than to resemble it. Translating

reflects the protean life of languages – and the

restlessness of language in a restless world. Translation

gestures towards other languages and awakens the presence of

difference. In seeking out the original which is itself

never immobile, translation evokes the foreignness of the

other – and in this case, the foreign and colonial

encounters in language which would have provoked mimeses as

well as alterities.68 In the interplay of negeri and negara,

translation not only effaces the original but the translator

as well. Who is the translator matters less than what has

become of the translation and the evolving nature of

43

translating, and the cornucopia of meaning engendered. In

translation, meaning erupts and disrupts as well. In the

shaping and hardening of the nation-state, what is

translated is, as well, the possible certainty of nation-

hood but only in the acknowledgement of the simultaneous

existence of the other and of that which is not – Derrida’s

absence-presence. It is an allegory of erasure – an erasure

which “exposes that which it resists and which resists

it.”69 It is as many claim, the nation-state is constituted

by difference – and in difference. If, as Blanchot writes,

that language contains within it, the future, then the

emergence of negara is only possible though the language of

the other in the socio-historical processes of nation-

building, and the acts of translating.

Good translation, according to Maurice Blanchot, offers

without recourse to artificial incoherence, a lightness – a

light space between the words. In his essay on authority and

translations of Kafka, Milan Kundera70 argues that the

supreme authority for any translator must be the author’s

44

personal style rather than the dictates of language, hence

“good French”, or “good German” or “good Malay”. Kundera

goes on to say that an author of value will, in any case

write against the “good style”, or will transgress good

style. The job of the translator is thus not to rein in the

mistakes, but to understand and translate the author’s

“transgressions” though this, Kundera admits, is not always

possible. This is not to say that it is utterly impossible

to translate anything – even experiences, and even a

landscape. As Jakobson reminds us “languages differ

essentially in what they must convey and not in what they

may convey.”71 Only a “creative transposition” is possible

enabling the movement of one poetic shape to another, and

from one system of signs to another and which carries its

own “autonomous signification.” The question is how we may

convey – and forge the connections and perhaps we forge them

through subtle levels of mutual perception whether in books,

food, music, emotions or in moral responses. In Benjamin’s

words:

45

Only if the sense of a linguistic creation may be

equated with the information it conveys does some

ultimate, decisive element remain beyond all

communication – quite close and yet infinitely remote,

concealed or distinguishable, fragmented or powerful.

In all language and linguistic creation there remains

in addition to what can be conveyed something that

cannot be communicated; depending on the context in

which it appears, it is something that symbolizes or

something symbolized.”72

A final word of possible translation-as-betrayal here – and

of Milan Kundera’s translation-as-betrayal turned

translation-as-salvation.73 At the heart of the translation

lies the idea of transfer, movement, the assuming of a

different body – and this too implies the process of

change, and becoming. For Kundera, whose own lot has been

identified closely with the experience of the exile, it is

not only language which betrays in the transfer over, but

the self and identity as well and nationalities -- that is,

both the betrayal and surrender of monolithic origins and

46

rigid citizenships. Where translation betrays, there is also

salvation in the loss – especially when we regard the

malleable and polysemous identity of the exile, the

immigrant, the refugee, the wanderer -- and the possible

reshaping of worlds and subjectivities rather than

aimlessness and loss. There is no dream of the common

language without risking the realization and acknowledgement

that it is quite possibly, a dream.

And the act of translation is more than an ideological or

discursive act. It is a spatio-temporal gesture that

requires an experiential movement. Translation is a spatial

process, a cartographical crossing – like the traveler, you

do not simply leave your experiences behind but you engage

with foreign landscapes with what you always already know –

and the always already shuffles the spaces of time-past, -

present and – future. It is the immersion in the linguistic

topographies which forges the process of the subject – an

ontological journey through the mirrors of languages. We are

transfiguring from one nation to another, one culture to

47

another, from one history to another – nation, culture,

history. We are literally moving from one geographical space

to another. Language is a human universal but it is also

embedded in time and space, historically and politically

shaped, and woven into the collective memory of a culture,

constituted by individual and societal experiences. The

modern nation-state in any part of the world, former

colonies or not, and inheritors of particular

epistemological systems, is always marinated in its own

peculiar cultural and historical concoction. Nonetheless,

such concoctions are always digested and become intrinsic,

constituting the body of the nation.

It is often the hard facts that grate against historical

imagination. Perhaps then in speaking of or expressing the

colonial state and its transformations, there might be a

virtue in resorting to mythical language and the metaphors

of change and metamorphoses -- bedbugs can be tortoises, and

grasshoppers, eagles – and let fancy take over. Such is the

translation of the nation-state.

48

Fables

Let us end where we began: Singapore. The story is told

many times, and with great regularity, recited to school

children, and narrated to curious inquiring visitors and

tourists: Singapore is the lion city. Along the esplanade,

an aloof mythical beast stands guard – spewing forth ribbons

of water from its mouth. It is a chimera -- a lion with a

fishtail. The Merlion surveys the surrounding waters,

embracing both its land and sea heritage. This is its story.

Sometime in the fourteenth century, a Hindu prince by the

name of Parameswara, who was on his way to Malacca, stopped

in the island of Temasek, the ancient name for Singapore.

Resting under a tree, he espied a leonine creature. When

asked of the creature, he was told in Sanskrit, it was a

Singa or “a lion”. Pura is defined as a “city”, hence today’s

“Lion City” or Singapore. Since it was unlikely that lions

ever roamed the Malay peninsular though tigers were

plentiful, the Hobson-Jobson,74 published in 1886, provides

49

an alternative Sanskrit definition: Singgah – is to tarry,

Pura, to pretend (the contemporary Malay for “pretend” is

pura-pura) – but together, singgah and pura was the ‘city

where one breaks one’s journey”. Another translation seems

apt for our purpose here -- Singapura is “treacherous delay”

referring to the dangers of hovering pirates. If so, Temasek

then was a place of transit, of temporary respite, or a

substitute settlement, before Parameswara and his followers

moved northwards across the Straits of Johor to Malacca.

Before Stamford Raffles hoisted the flag in the early days

of 1819, Singapore was a great ancient port-city, it was

Cape Cinca-pula and known to navigators from far and wide;

it was, over time, a stop for travelers, for traders, a

dangerous hiding place for pirates, home to a scattering of

fisherfolk – or so Raffles claimed.75 But there is more --

for the followers of the ‘Bhairava’, a form of Buddhism

practiced at the court of the Majapahit Kingdom, the use of

the word ‘Singa’ in connection to the lion was the

deliberate symbol of prowess. Some ancient cities on islands

such as Bali and Java were ‘Singarajya’ and ‘Singasari’, and

50

‘Singapura’ was part of the thematic connection, being the

‘city of prowess’.76

And it came to pass -- that if the Hobson-Jobson definition

is reliable, then Singapore today constitutes its history

out of bad translation -- or more appropriately, good

translation. In order to select a particular historical

lineage -- the lion is a nod to its chimeric nature – of the

British Empire heritage and a mythical past that spans the

entire Malay archipelago, on land and sea. If we are to

return to the roots of translation as traduttore, as transfer,

bring over and transpose; traditum, to surrender and hand down

to posterity, and as traditor – meaning traitor, then is it

not better for a country or nation to translate itself as

‘Lion City’ rather than to tarry, pretend or/and be

treacherous delay?

Notes

51

1This is disputed because Abdullah links his first arrival to the

arrival of the new harbor master, who supposedly did not arrive until

January of 1820. Munshi Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir (1907/1908). Hikayat

Abdullah. 2 Vols. Singapore: Methodist Publishing House.

2 The growing population of Singapore was attributed mainly to

migration from the mainland (the Malay peninsula) and the surrounding

areas. See W. Bartley (1933). “Population of Singapore in 1819”

Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society XI, (2), 177. Bartley

writes of a Captain Newbold who counted 150 fishermen and pirates of

whom about 30 were Chinese. In 1824 when the first census was

conducted, the population of Singapore is identified at 10,683–3,317

Chinese, 6431 Malays, 830 Indians, 74 Europeans, and 31 "Others."

Singapore in 1819 was described by the British founder, Sir Stamford

Raffles as an “appearance of content and abundance” and he writes:

It is impossible to conceive a place combining more

advantages; it is within a week's sail to China, still

closer to Siam, Cochin-China, &c. in the very heart of the

Archipelago, or as the Malays call it, it is "the Navel of the

Malay countries"; already a population of above five thousand

souls has collected under our flag, the number is daily

increasing, the harbour, in everyway superior, is filled

with shipping from all quarters; and although our

Settlement has not been established more than four months……

Raffles, T. S. (1819/1878). “The Founding of Singapore.”

Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (2), 175-182.

This is an extract from a letter to Col. Addenbrooke, 178-179.

3 Bin Abdul Kadir, 2.

4 Here I refer to Edward Said, Niranjani, Homi Bhabha, and scholars

associated with Subaltern Studies and who are identified with Post-

Colonial critique,

5 See Reinhart Kosellect “Transformations of Experience and

Methodological Change” in The Practice of Conceptual History Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 45.

6 Thomas Bowrey (1701) A Dictionary of English and Malayo, Malayo and English

London: Sam Bridge sold by Dan Brown at the Black Swan without

Temple-Bar, Tim Child at White Hart in St. Pauls Churchyard.

7 This would correspond to John Leyden’s assertion that Malay exists

in its purest form in the tin countries on the peninsula – or

Ptolemy’s ‘Temala’ – which means tin. It was Ptolemy who called the

peninsula The Golden Chersonese. Tin became one of the most mined

resources in the Federated Malay States of Perak and Selangor. See

John Leyden (1808) “On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-

Chinese Nations” Asiatic Researches Vol. X, 158-289, 88.

8 William Marsden (1812) “Introduction” in A Dictionary and Grammar of the

Malayan Language London: Cox and Bayliss, i.

9 ibid, ii.

10 See Sir Frank A. Swettenham (1909) Vocabulary of the English and Malay

Languages with notes Singapore: Kelly and Walsh ltd.

11 William Marsden (1812) “Introduction”, xxiii

12 John Leyden (1808) “On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-

Chinese Nations” Asiatic Researches vol. X, 158-289, 90.

13 W.E. Maxwell (1888/1988) “Preface” in A Manual of the Malay Language

Reprint of the 2nd Edition Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, iii-iv.

14 John Leyden, trans. (1821) Malay Annals with an introduction by Sir

Thomas Stamford Raffles London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and

Brown.

15 This was compiled between 1595-1597.

16 Russell Jones (1983) “Introduction” Vol. 1 in William Marsden

(1812/1984) Dictionary of the Grammar of the Malayan Language Singapore:

Oxford University Press, 2 Vols. Jones provides an interesting

account of the eccentricities of John Howison’s dictionary which made

up Arabic words as well as spelt the words following the Latin form.

17 See William Marsden (1838) A Brief Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late

William Marsden written by himself with notes from his correspondence London: J.L.

Cox and Sons, 75 Great Queen Street. See footnote on page 143 which

is the letter by John Crawfurd.

18 Dr. J. Pejnappel (1884) Maleisch-Hallandsch Woordenboek Haarlem: Joh.

Enschede en Zonen, Amsterdam: Frederik Muller.

19 See Marsden, 1812 extensive discussion of benua, v-vi.

20 See Greg Dening (2006) “Living in Deep Time Public Lecture” Journal of

Historical Sociology 19.1 (page numbers to follow)

21 L’abbé P. Favre (1875) Dictionnaire Malais-Francais Vienne: Imprimarie

Imperialé et Royalé.

22 See H.C. Klinkert (1930) Niuew Malaeisch-nederlandsch Woordenboek Leiden:

E.J. Brill .

23 There are several R. O. Winstedt Malay-English dictionaries and

they are published from 1915 to 1960.

24 Kamus Dewan Bahasa, 1994.

25 Zainal Abidin bin Safarwan (1966) An Advanced Malay-English

Dictionary Kuala Lumpur: Marican and Sons. He also worked closely

with Wilkinson and Winstedt and is always cited by them as a valuable

colleague and contributor.

26 R.J. Wilkinson (1901) A Malay-English Dictionary Singapore: Kelly and

Walsh. (also see other versions and Malay reprint)

27 This is a Malay introduction. Haji Ab. Rahim bin Haji Abdullah

(1985) “Pengenalan” in R.J. Wilkinson A Malay-English Dictionary Kuala

Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

28 Teeuw, A. with the assistance of H.W. Emanuels (1961) A Critical Survey

of Studies on Malaya and Bahasa Indonesia The Hague: S-Gravenhage-Martinus

Nijhoff.

29 See Marsden ,1812, “Introduction” ii.

30 Leyden, 1808, 87. Some critics of the language, however, find Malay

terse and abrupt in speech though as many of the Malay scholars

contend, the language has many colloquial variants across the

peninsula alone.

31 Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) The Inoperative Community trans. By Peter Connor,

Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 42.

32 Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) “Myth Interrupted” in The Inoperative Community

trans. By Peter Connor, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 50.

33 Also spelled as Menangkabau.

34 The origins of the Malay language was highly disputed between

William Marsden and John Leyden who traced the origins of the Malay

peoples and cultures to Langkapura in Java and the Majapahit Kingdom.

See as well William Marsden, (1811/1966) History of Sumatra Kuala Lumpur:

Oxford University Press, 327.

35 The Menangkabau ‘commence their national history with an account of

Noah’s flood, and of the disembarkation of certain persons from the

Ark, at a place between the mouths of the Palembang and Jambi

rivers”, Marsden (1812) “Introduction”, vi.

36 R. J. Wilkinson (1901) “Preface” in A Malay-English Dictionary

Singapore: Kelly and Walsh, 2.

37 John Leyden argues that the Malay spoken by the Minangkabau differs

considerably from that on the Peninsula but shares greater

similarities with the forms spoken in Java. See Leyden, 1808, 88-89.

38 Hayden White (1999) “Literary Theory and Historical Writing” in

Figural Realism Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University

Press, 21-22.

39 Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) “Myth Interrupted”, 45, 51. See also

discussions on myth as bricolage by Claude Levi Strauss (1962/1968)

The Savage Mind London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

40 See Marsden, (1812) but also William Marsden (?) “On the Traces of

the Hindu Language and Literature Extant amongst the Malays” in Asiatic

Researches vol. iv, 223-7; John Leyden (1808) “On the Languages and

Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations” Asiatic Researches vol. X, 158-

289. See also Wilkinson, 1901, “Preface” and Wilkinson’s own 1932

preface to the reprint of Wilkinson’s 1901 dictionary.

41 P. J. Zoetmulder with the collaboration of S.O. Robson (1982) Old

Javanese-English Dictionary The Hague: S.-Gravenhage-Martinus Nijhoff. This

is a reprint of Herman Neubronner’s Van der Turk (died 1894)

manuscript of Old Javanese-Balinese-Dutch Dictionary that he

completed but printing had just started. This was a result of Van der

Turk’s study of the Javanese language for almost a quarter of a

century. The entire volumes were finally published by 1912.

42 See Claude Levi-Strauss (1992) The View from Afar Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

43 A number of dictionaries include Tanah Melayu and Tanahair or Tanahayer

as accompanying forms of Tanah. The importance of tanah is not

excluded from military handbooks either and this includes James

Pearce’s 1944 The Military Handbook of Instruction in Colloquial Malay which became

the standard Malay textbook of the Commonwealth Forces and is

published by the Army education department of the Third Australian

Corps.

44 Marsden, 1812, ix.

45 See Stamford Raffle’s introduction in John Leyden’s Malay Annals.

Raffles argues that these maritime communities were forced into

piracy due to the monopoly of Dutch trading interests. vii-ix.

46 Dening. The ‘Sea of Islands’ is the name given by the Sea Peoples

(known too as Austronesians or Archeo-Polynesians) for the Pacific,

South Seas, Polynesia or/and Oceania.

47 See H. C. Klinkert (1930) Nieuw Maleisch-Nederlandsch Woordenbeok

Leiden: E.J. Brill. For an idea of ‘market malay’ spoken in the

nineteenth century, see Lim Hong Seng (1887) A Manual of the Malay

Colloquial such as is spoken by all nationalities in the Colonies of the Straits Settlements and

designed for domestic and all business purposes 2 Vols. Singapore: Koh Yew Hean

Press.

48 Michael Laffan, (forthcoming) 'Dispersing God's shadows:

reflections on the translation of Arabic political concepts into

Malay and Indonesian' in H. Chambert-Loir (ed), A History of Translation in

Southeast Asia. EFEO/Archipel. See also

http://www.anu.edu.au/asianstudies/proudfoot/MCP/Q/papers.html

49 E.P Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (need full refeence)

50 Renato Poggioli “The Added Artificer” in R. Brouwer (1959) On

Translation Cambridge, mass: Harvard University Press.

51 Walter Benjamin‘The Task of the Translator’ in llluminations ed. By

Hannah Arendt (1968) New York: Schocken Books, 69-82.

52 Ibid, 78-79.

53 Ibid, 78.

54 Hayden White (1973), Metahistory Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 87.

55 Clifford Geertz (1999) “The World in Pieces” in Available Light

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

56 Roman Jakobson “Linguistic aspects of Translation” in R. Brouwer

(1959) On Translation Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 232-

239.

57 Jakobson, 238.

58 See Rachel Price’s discussion of “Translation, Terror, Terrorism”

in a colloquia http://www.duke.edu/~jad2/colloquia.htm

59 I refer here to perpetual tensions in the politics among Malaysia,

Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor, Indonesia and Aceh – and the

terrorist threat in the region. The issues between Singapore,

Malaysia – and Indonesia, include among them, issues over water to

state visitors from Israel.

60 This is a Malay definition found in Kamus Dewi Bahasa Inggeris - Bahasa

Malaysia 1985 Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

61 Winstedt (1915) An English-Malay Dictionary in Four Parts (based on R. J. Wilkinson’s

Malay-English Dictionary) Singapore: Kelly and Walsh. Also Winstedt (1952)

An English-Malay Dictionary Singapore: Marican and Sons. See also Eduard F.

Winckel (1944) Handbook of the Malay Language Containing Phrases, Grammar and

Dictionary with Special Attention to Military and Vocational Requirements Pasadena, Ca.:

P.D. and Ione Perkins. Winckel’s handbook and dictionary translates

nation not only as bangsa but ‘ka-oem’ (kaum) which is ethnic group

or tribe, as well as ‘negeri’.

62 Rev. W. G. Shellabear (1899/1921) A Practical Malay Grammar Singapore:

Methodist Publishing House, 55.

63 W.E. Maxwell (1888/1988) A Manual of the Malay Language Reprint of the

2nd Edition Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag.

64 Also see Ernst Renan in Homi Bhabha’s Nation and Narration London and

New York: Routledge. However, Zainal Abidin Bin Safarwan (1966)

translates ‘bumiputera’ as ‘innate or indigenous native’ though this

does not include the aboriginal peoples in Malaysia.

65 Only ‘bumiputeras’ have the constitutional right to hold the

highest office in the land.

66 Maurice Blanchot (1997) ‘Translating” in Friendship trans. by

Elizabeth Rottenberg Stanford, Ca.: Standford University Press, 57-

61.

67 Blanchot, The Time of Encyclopedias in Friendship trans. by Elizabeth

Rottenberg Stanford, Ca.: Standford University Press, 50-56.

68 with apologies to Michael Taussig’s 1993 book title Mimesis and

Alterity: A Particular Study of the Senses London: Routledge.

69 Jacques Derrida (2004) “If There is a Cause to Translate I:

Philosophy in its National Language ( Toward a “licterature en

François”)” in Eyes to the University trans. by Jan Plug and Others,

Stanford, California: Stanford California Press, 19.

70 Milan Kundera “A Sentence” in Testaments Betrayed

71 Jakobson, 237-238.

72 Benjamin, 79.

73Kundera, from Testaments Betrayed and Art of the Novel, “Sixty-Three

Words.”

74 Sir Henry Yule (1886/1903) Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial

Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological,

historical, geographical and discursive. New Ed. edited by William

Crooke, B.A. London: J. Murray.

75 Thomas Suarez (1999) Early Mapping of Southeast Asia Hong Kong and

Singapore: Periphery Books, 148-149.

76 Donald F. Lach & Edwin J. Van Key (1993) Asia in the Making of Europe 4

Vols. Vol. 3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 507.

(check publishers)