Translate Malay To English With Correct Grammar
Tabatha Pasqua
Bible translations into Malay include translations of the whole or parts of the Bible into any of the levels and varieties of the Malay language. Publication of early or partial translations began as early as the seventeenth century although there is evidence that the Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, translated religious texts that included Bible verses into Malay as early as the sixteenth century.[1]
The Protestant Reformation saw the rise in interest in vernacular translations of the Bible in Europe. By the sixteenth century, Protestant European nations like the Dutch Republic and England had begun to encroach into the traditional realms of influence of the Catholic Portuguese in the Malay Archipelago. With the Dutch domination of the East Indies, where Malay was the lingua franca of trade, the translation of the Bible into Malay was one of the first extant translations of the Bible in a language that wasn't from Europe or the Middle East.[2]
Developments in the translation of the Bible into Malay revolved and continues to revolve around three considerations including establishing the standards of the Malay language, including rules of grammar, vocabulary and spelling; discovering appropriate ways of using Malay to communicate Christian concepts within the Malay culture; and catering for the target groups of the translation work and means of dissemination. One of the most pressing practical issues concerns the use of loan-words from Arabic and Persian which entered the Malay vocabulary through the Islamisation of the Malay people[2] and this issue remains a politically and socially sensitive issue in Malaysia where Malay is the national language and Islam the official religion.[3]
The period of Classical Malay started when Islam gained its foothold in the region and the elevation of its status to a state religion in many of the Malay kingdoms of the Malay Archipelago. As a result of Islamisation and growth in trade with the Muslim world, this era witnessed the penetration of Arabic and Persian vocabulary into Malay.
The first systematic attempt to translate the Bible into Malay was by a Dutch trader of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Albert Cornelius Ruyl, who finished his translation of the Gospel of Matthew in 1612. The translation was published in 1629 in Enkhuizen in the form of a Malay-Dutch diglot which also included translations of the Ten Commandments, the Benedictus, the Greater Doxology, the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and a few other liturgical prayers and canticles.[4][5]
This was followed by the publication of his translation of the Gospel of Mark together with his earlier translation of Matthew in a single volume in 1638. Contemporary translations of the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke was being done by a VOC officer named Jan Van Hasel while a translation of the Acts of the Apostles was being done by the chaplain of Batavia, Justus Heurnius. In 1651, all these translations were revised by Heurnius and published as a single volume in Amsterdam.[6][4]
The first complete translation of the Bible in Malay was begun by Melchior Leydekker on the order of the church authorities in Batavia and was officially sponsored by the VOC from 1691. Melchior had just completed translating about 90% of the Bible when he died in 1701 and the work was completed by the Rev Peter van der Vorm the same year.[2] The Bible was only published in 1733 as its publication was delayed by the Rev Francois Valentijn while he completed his translation in the Moluccas dialect of Malay. Valentijn's translation was, however, rejected by the VOC due to it being in a regional dialect of Malay and a direct translation of the Dutch Statenvertaling rather than from the Hebrew and Greek.[4]
Leydekker's translation was criticised for its heavy use of Arabic and Persian loanwords and was specifically criticised by Munshi Abdullah for its poor use of grammar and idioms. Nonetheless, it remained the standard translation used in the Dutch East Indies until 1916 and in both British Malaya and British Borneo until 1853. Apart from the catechisms and prayer books translated by the Roman Catholics, all of the earliest translations of the Bible in the Malay language originating from the East Indies were first printed in the Latin script before being republished in the Jawi script commonly used by the local Malays. The first translation that was first published in Jawi did not happen until 1912.[2]
The nineteenth century was the period of strong Western political and commercial domination in Southeast Asia. Partially as a result of the Batavian Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the Dutch no longer held a dominant position in the region and British influence was increasingly present with the establishment of several colonies and protectorates in the Malay peninsula and Borneo.
The Dutch and British colonists, realising the importance in understanding the local languages and cultures particularly Malay, began establishing various centres of linguistic, literature and cultural studies in universities like Leiden and London. Thousands of Malay manuscripts as well as other historical artefacts of Malay culture were collected and studied.[7] The use of Latin script began to expand in the fields of administration and education whereby the influence of English and Dutch literatures and languages started to penetrate and spread gradually into the Malay language.
At the same time, the technological development in printing method that enabled mass production at low prices increased the activities of authorship for general reading in the Malay language, a development that would later shift away Malay literature from its traditional position in Malay courts.[7] Munshi Abdullah, a prolific writer and pioneer of the factual journalistic style of writing in Malay literature, marks an early stage in the transition from the classical to modern literature, taking Malay literature out of its preoccupation with folk-stories and legends into accurate historical descriptions.[8]
It was in this period that the Anglican chaplain of the British Settlement of Penang, the Rev Robert Sparke Hutchings, attempted to correct Leydekker's translation. He and his colleague, J. McGinnis, found over 10,000 words not found in William Marsden's Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language. The revised translation of the New Testament was published in Serampore, India in 1817 and the Old Testament in 1821 by the British and Foreign Bible Society or BFBS. This translation did not appear to have been widely distributed outside of Penang.[2]
While awaiting permission to enter China, the London Missionary Society (LMS) established a mission station in Malacca. Pioneered by William Milne, Malacca was deemed suitable due to its location on the ordinary trade routes to China as well as having a sizable Chinese population. Aware of Munshi Abdullah's criticism of the Leydekker translation, the LMS sent Claudius Henry Thomsen in 1815 with the specific assignment to work among the Malay people. He became a close friend and student of Munshi Abdullah and from 1818 to 1832 undertook the task to revise Leydekker's translation of the Gospels and with the help of Robert Burns, the chaplain of Singapore, the Acts of the Apostles with what the language skills he learnt from Munshi Abdullah.
Revision of the Thomsen and Burns translation was undertaken almost immediately after Thomsen left Malaya in 1832 by John Stronach of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions on the instruction of James Legge, the missionary in charge of the LMS work in Malacca, in view of publishing a second edition of the Malay New Testament. This endeavour did not come into fruition as there was concern by the directors of the LMS on the close involvement of a Muslim, Munshi Abdullah, in the translation.[10] The opening of China to missionaries in 1842 after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking also saw the sudden exodus of LMS missionaries from the Straits Settlements to China, which was their original destination.[11]
The closure of the LMS mission in the Straits Settlements in 1847 left the work of translating the Bible in British Malaya solely in the hands of Benjamin Keasberry and his long time language teacher, Munshi Abdullah. Keasberry, a LMS missionary himself, chose to stay behind as an independent missionary after the closure of the LMS mission.[12] While his translation work was no longer financially supported by the LMS, he did receive some financial support from the BFBS.[13] A complete New Testament was published in 1852 in the Latin script and in 1856, a Jawi edition was published as well. This translation became the main translation used not just in the Malay peninsula, but also in Sumatra and Borneo for the next few decades.[14]
While Keasberry managed to complete the translation of some books of the Old Testament, they were never published and his death in 1875 ended any extensive work on Christian literature in the Malay language in the Malay peninsula until the close of the century.[14][15]
Meanwhile in the Dutch East Indies, a German missionary working in Surabaya, Johannes Emde, published a revision of Leydekker's translation into the local dialect in 1835. This translation is considered to be the first widely distributed translation in Low Malay.[16] Valentijn's earlier translation in the Moluccas dialect of Low Malay in 1677 was rejected by the VOC who then had a monopoly on religious instruction and publication in the East Indies and was never published.
Another noteworthy translation into Ambonese Malay was done by Bernhard Nikolaas Johann Roskott (1811-1873), who was a Dutch missionary in Ambon, in what is now Indonesia. His translation in the Ambon dialect was completed and published in 1877[6] by the National Bible Society of Scotland (now the Scottish Bible Society). His New Testament was revised by H.C. Klinkert in 1883 and published by the National Bible Society of Scotland.[17] In the 1931 the Gospel of John from this New Testament was republished by Scripture Gift Mission and the National Bible Society of Scotland.
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