This article explores the preservation of humour in the Indonesian translation of Harry Potter an... more This article explores the preservation of humour in the Indonesian translation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Through the use of questionnaires completed by young readers aged 12-15 years old, we examine whether passages in the novel that are deemed humorous in the English original are also perceived as such by Indonesian readers. Our findings reveal the complexity of translating linguistic and culturally-specific humour in a novel. We conclude that the Indonesian translator of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone adopted an interpretative-communicative method of translation. In doing so, some compromises were made, particularly, through simplification, which frequently resulted in humour loss.
University of Sydney Working Papers Series, Jul 2013
The history of Javanese indentured immigrants in Suriname has been told by a number of historians... more The history of Javanese indentured immigrants in Suriname has been told by a number of historians. What has been less documented is the repatriation of over 1,000 Javanese Surinamese to Indonesia in 1954. A number of those repatriates are still alive, although those that can still remember the voyage from Suriname and the establishment of the settlement in Tongar in Sumatra are now quite elderly. In this paper I tell the stories of five of those repatriates, all of whom now live in Java. The paper makes a contribution to understandings of migration, diaspora and Javanese identity.
A noticeable trend in recent Indonesian fiction and film has been the use of children as protagon... more A noticeable trend in recent Indonesian fiction and film has been the use of children as protagonists. This paper examines the role of children in Andrea Hirata’s 2005 novel Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Warriors) and the 2006 film Denias, directed by John de Rantau. I argue that, like the German Bildungsromane, these texts belong to a genre that might be called ‘coming of age’ or quest narratives. And yet, importantly, they are not just about the personal experience of finding one’s place in the world; the young protagonists of these texts also carry the weight of nation-building on their slender shoulders. The texts are not, therefore, simple derivations from European Bildungsromane, but are shaped by colonialism and globalization.
Between 1890 and 1939, around 33,000 Javanese were recruited in Java and taken to Suriname to wor... more Between 1890 and 1939, around 33,000 Javanese were recruited in Java and taken to Suriname to work as contract labourers on the sugar plantations. Many descendants of those contract labourers still live there. Based on interviews with and observations of Javanese Surinamese in June and July 2009, I examine cultural maintenance among the Javanese in twenty-first century Suriname, following and in some cases updating the observations of earlier scholars who have undertaken research in the field. My analysis is informed by Fredrik Barth’s claim that an ethnic group and its ‘culture’ do not necessarily share the same boundaries (Barth 1970:38).
Around 7000 Indonesians currently live in New Caledonia as a result of a relatively little-known ... more Around 7000 Indonesians currently live in New Caledonia as a result of a relatively little-known chapter in the history of Indonesia
The starting point for this paper was a question directed to a panel of writers (all of them youn... more The starting point for this paper was a question directed to a panel of writers (all of them young women) at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in October 2004. A (male) Balinese writer asked them why they only ever write about sex, and why they do not engage with politics and contemporary social issues in their writing. I was reminded of Ann Rosalind Jones’ observation (1981: 328) that ‘in many ...cultures, taboos against female speech are enforced: injunctions to silence, mockery of women’s chatter or ‘women’s books’ abound.’
Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Feb 2009
Commonly known by its acronym RUU-APP, Indonesia's controversial anti-pornography bill is still u... more Commonly known by its acronym RUU-APP, Indonesia's controversial anti-pornography bill is still under consideration by parliament, five years after being introduced there. This article is an updated version of my earlier article 'Challenging diversity?: Indonesia's antipornography bill,'[1] which comprised a broad discussion of responses to the bill by women, artists and minority ethnic groups in Indonesia. In the present article I focus on and amplify the responses to the bill by women from across the spectrum of Indonesian society. I draw on media reports and secondary sources that have documented responses by women and women's organisations to the bill. My analysis is contextualised within a broader discussion of the impact of democratisation on the status of women in the post-Suharto era (1998–2008) and the emergence of hundreds of new NGOs in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto. It is not my purpose to make a judgment about the current state of women's organisations per se in Indonesia, beyond their engagement with the bill. I do, however, make some observations about what the intensive involvement by women in resistance to the bill might suggest about the role of women in public life in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto. Resistance to the bill can provide a lens through which to read the involvement of women in other political and social developments in the last decade, including, for example, those covered in the other articles in this issue. Barbara Hatley's article, 'Hearing Women's Voices, Contesting Women's Bodies in Post New Order
Indonesia,' in Issue 16 of Intersections illustrates the centrality of the bill, and response to it, in discussions of the 'public presence of women' in Indonesia.
Since the fall of Suharto a number of Chinese Indonesian writers have begun to write as Chinese I... more Since the fall of Suharto a number of Chinese Indonesian writers have begun to write as Chinese Indonesians, some using their Chinese names, some writing in Mandarin. New literary activities include the gathering, publishing and translating (from Mandarin) of short stories and poetry by Chinese Indonesians. Pribumi Indonesians too have privileged Chinese ethnicity in their works in new and compelling ways. To date, little of this new Chinese Indonesian literary activity has been documented or evaluated in English. This paper begins to fill that gap by examining the ways in which recent literary works by and about Chinese Indonesians give expression to their ethnic identity.
When quizzed by students at a 2001 seminar about whether he is a journalist, a short story writer... more When quizzed by students at a 2001 seminar about whether he is a journalist, a short story writer, a poet or a political commentator, and about whether his work is surrealism, magic realism, fantasy or postmodernist journalism, Seno Gumira Ajidarma gave the enigmatic reply, 'Call it whatever you want. It's what I do.'
This article explores the preservation of humour in the Indonesian translation of Harry Potter an... more This article explores the preservation of humour in the Indonesian translation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Through the use of questionnaires completed by young readers aged 12-15 years old, we examine whether passages in the novel that are deemed humorous in the English original are also perceived as such by Indonesian readers. Our findings reveal the complexity of translating linguistic and culturally-specific humour in a novel. We conclude that the Indonesian translator of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone adopted an interpretative-communicative method of translation. In doing so, some compromises were made, particularly, through simplification, which frequently resulted in humour loss.
University of Sydney Working Papers Series, Jul 2013
The history of Javanese indentured immigrants in Suriname has been told by a number of historians... more The history of Javanese indentured immigrants in Suriname has been told by a number of historians. What has been less documented is the repatriation of over 1,000 Javanese Surinamese to Indonesia in 1954. A number of those repatriates are still alive, although those that can still remember the voyage from Suriname and the establishment of the settlement in Tongar in Sumatra are now quite elderly. In this paper I tell the stories of five of those repatriates, all of whom now live in Java. The paper makes a contribution to understandings of migration, diaspora and Javanese identity.
A noticeable trend in recent Indonesian fiction and film has been the use of children as protagon... more A noticeable trend in recent Indonesian fiction and film has been the use of children as protagonists. This paper examines the role of children in Andrea Hirata’s 2005 novel Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Warriors) and the 2006 film Denias, directed by John de Rantau. I argue that, like the German Bildungsromane, these texts belong to a genre that might be called ‘coming of age’ or quest narratives. And yet, importantly, they are not just about the personal experience of finding one’s place in the world; the young protagonists of these texts also carry the weight of nation-building on their slender shoulders. The texts are not, therefore, simple derivations from European Bildungsromane, but are shaped by colonialism and globalization.
Between 1890 and 1939, around 33,000 Javanese were recruited in Java and taken to Suriname to wor... more Between 1890 and 1939, around 33,000 Javanese were recruited in Java and taken to Suriname to work as contract labourers on the sugar plantations. Many descendants of those contract labourers still live there. Based on interviews with and observations of Javanese Surinamese in June and July 2009, I examine cultural maintenance among the Javanese in twenty-first century Suriname, following and in some cases updating the observations of earlier scholars who have undertaken research in the field. My analysis is informed by Fredrik Barth’s claim that an ethnic group and its ‘culture’ do not necessarily share the same boundaries (Barth 1970:38).
Around 7000 Indonesians currently live in New Caledonia as a result of a relatively little-known ... more Around 7000 Indonesians currently live in New Caledonia as a result of a relatively little-known chapter in the history of Indonesia
The starting point for this paper was a question directed to a panel of writers (all of them youn... more The starting point for this paper was a question directed to a panel of writers (all of them young women) at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in October 2004. A (male) Balinese writer asked them why they only ever write about sex, and why they do not engage with politics and contemporary social issues in their writing. I was reminded of Ann Rosalind Jones’ observation (1981: 328) that ‘in many ...cultures, taboos against female speech are enforced: injunctions to silence, mockery of women’s chatter or ‘women’s books’ abound.’
Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Feb 2009
Commonly known by its acronym RUU-APP, Indonesia's controversial anti-pornography bill is still u... more Commonly known by its acronym RUU-APP, Indonesia's controversial anti-pornography bill is still under consideration by parliament, five years after being introduced there. This article is an updated version of my earlier article 'Challenging diversity?: Indonesia's antipornography bill,'[1] which comprised a broad discussion of responses to the bill by women, artists and minority ethnic groups in Indonesia. In the present article I focus on and amplify the responses to the bill by women from across the spectrum of Indonesian society. I draw on media reports and secondary sources that have documented responses by women and women's organisations to the bill. My analysis is contextualised within a broader discussion of the impact of democratisation on the status of women in the post-Suharto era (1998–2008) and the emergence of hundreds of new NGOs in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto. It is not my purpose to make a judgment about the current state of women's organisations per se in Indonesia, beyond their engagement with the bill. I do, however, make some observations about what the intensive involvement by women in resistance to the bill might suggest about the role of women in public life in Indonesia since the fall of Suharto. Resistance to the bill can provide a lens through which to read the involvement of women in other political and social developments in the last decade, including, for example, those covered in the other articles in this issue. Barbara Hatley's article, 'Hearing Women's Voices, Contesting Women's Bodies in Post New Order
Indonesia,' in Issue 16 of Intersections illustrates the centrality of the bill, and response to it, in discussions of the 'public presence of women' in Indonesia.
Since the fall of Suharto a number of Chinese Indonesian writers have begun to write as Chinese I... more Since the fall of Suharto a number of Chinese Indonesian writers have begun to write as Chinese Indonesians, some using their Chinese names, some writing in Mandarin. New literary activities include the gathering, publishing and translating (from Mandarin) of short stories and poetry by Chinese Indonesians. Pribumi Indonesians too have privileged Chinese ethnicity in their works in new and compelling ways. To date, little of this new Chinese Indonesian literary activity has been documented or evaluated in English. This paper begins to fill that gap by examining the ways in which recent literary works by and about Chinese Indonesians give expression to their ethnic identity.
When quizzed by students at a 2001 seminar about whether he is a journalist, a short story writer... more When quizzed by students at a 2001 seminar about whether he is a journalist, a short story writer, a poet or a political commentator, and about whether his work is surrealism, magic realism, fantasy or postmodernist journalism, Seno Gumira Ajidarma gave the enigmatic reply, 'Call it whatever you want. It's what I do.'
Nh. Dini is generally regarded as the doyenne of women authors in Indonesia. The critic Budi Darm... more Nh. Dini is generally regarded as the doyenne of women authors in Indonesia. The critic Budi Darma contends that she is the only female Indonesian writer to give voice to the "great spirit of feminism" in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost all of her novels have nonconformist women narrators who challenge conventional notions of female sexuality as passive and submissive. While, as the critic A. Teeuw points out, "she is not primarily interested in social or political conditions in the ordinary sense of the word," her protagonists are almost always victims of poverty, powerlessness, or treachery. She was a pioneering figure for the new generation of female writers who have made their mark on the Indonesian literary scene in the twenty-first century.
In his novel 'Putri', Putu Wijaya applies his concept of 'New Tradition', which was originally ap... more In his novel 'Putri', Putu Wijaya applies his concept of 'New Tradition', which was originally applied to art, to Balinese customs and culture. This article is a close reading of Putu's new novel and suggests that he is rediscovering his Balinese roots, to which he previously expressed ambivalence.
The prestigious travel magazine Conde Nast recently ranked Bali and Tasmania as 1 and 2 respectiv... more The prestigious travel magazine Conde Nast recently ranked Bali and Tasmania as 1 and 2 respectively on its 'World's best islands' list. Both islands have a special place in the Australian national imagination. The reason is complex. It goes beyond the scenery, the climate, the people; it's something to do with the perceived 'contained' nature and the 'timelessness' of islands. As Conde Nast puts it: 'In paradise, some things never change - the vistas, the culture, the people'.
One of the most telling aspects of the polemics surrounding the issue of Chinese identity in Indo... more One of the most telling aspects of the polemics surrounding the issue of Chinese identity in Indonesia is the very language in which it is embedded. The Chinese, their culture, their religion, arguably their very existence in Indonesia, have been branded by colonialists, scholars and politicians alike as masalah Cina, 'the Chinese problem.' I am not necessarily suggesting that this has become a self-fulfilling prophesy, but I would argue that we are shaped, influenced, and to a certain extent defined by the labels that others put on us. In the case of the Chinese in Indonesia, it certainly seems to be a case of 'once a masalah, always a masalah.' Or, to look at it another way, as Ignatius Wibowo recently asked - rhetorically, presumably-: At what point does a person's Chinese-ness cease to be?') As I demonstrate in this chapter, labelling has played a very significant part in the way in which Chinese-Indonesians view and understand themselves and are viewed and understood by others.
In: Asian Nationalism in an Age of Globalization, 2001
Post-colonialist narratives have tended to reject the idea of nationalism as a totalising discour... more Post-colonialist narratives have tended to reject the idea of nationalism as a totalising discourse and to allow for it to encompass a number of different - even competing - ideologies. In late 1990s Indonesia, however, in the midst of what some saw as the "Balkanisation" of the nation, essentialist nationalism still appeared to occupy a significant space. Take for example the August 1997 editorial of the journal media karya budaya, which asked its readers to consider the difficulty of ... encouraging (our children) to forsake McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts and go back to Nyonya Suharti's fried chicken or Palembang fish cakes. When everything that smacks of being "Indonesian" is marginalised, can we still in all sincerity, in our 17 August ceremonies, give honour to the sacrifice made by our national heroes who died in the battle against colonialism and who returned Indonesia to her people? It is a plea that seeks to privilege an "authentic" form of nationalist sentiment over the vulgar commercialism of globalisation, and to achieve an identity 'uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric concepts and images'. (During 1988, 114) My paper examines a particular manifestation of this yearning for national wholeness: the concern with what Boehmer (1993, 273) calls 'maternal plenitude'.
Uploads
Indonesia,' in Issue 16 of Intersections illustrates the centrality of the bill, and response to it, in discussions of the 'public presence of women' in Indonesia.
Indonesia,' in Issue 16 of Intersections illustrates the centrality of the bill, and response to it, in discussions of the 'public presence of women' in Indonesia.