ABSTRACT
It is said that translations do not have much value because they are merely duplicates. Be that as it may, they do occupy a significant place in literature.2 (Tzu You 1939:21)
Abstract: For many centuries in the Malay world active and questioning use has been made of Arabic, Chinese, Indian and European source texts of all kinds. They were translated into Malay as well as into regional languages. This article outlines indigenous translation activities and colonial translation policy during the 19th and 20th centuries as they affected Malay literature. With the growing interference of the European colonial power in the educational sector and text production, the situation and tactics of the translators – among them Eurasians, Chinese, Sino-Malay, Arabs, Malay and Javanese – could not but change. Influenced also by their differing ethnic backgrounds, these translators developed diverse strategies, revealing divergent and sometimes contradictory notions of translation, translation history, and ‘ownership of the word’. This paper depicts the momentum that these concepts and strategies created in the Malay world. The screening and selection of cultural knowledge from outside the Malay traditions, as well as its purposeful acquisition and incorporation into the indigenous culture, has always relied on translation, but increasingly so when indigenously-run print media emerged in the Malay archipelago. From the late 19th century onwards literary translation in the broadest sense began to play a central role in the intellectual life of the Malay world. Within the indigenous context, a translation was apparently seen only as a first step, necessary to make the foreign source accessible, assessable, and – if deemed sufficiently relevant to be incorporated into the indigenous culture – adaptable.
