Why it is hard to convert English texts to Bahasa Indonesia?
There are some difficulties for any translator to translate English texts to Bahasa Indonesia. Here I will briefly discuss some major issues :
English noun phrase has pattern of A-B, where A is the
object being explained, and B is the explainer. For example, phrase 'blue
mountain' : word 'blue' explain the color of the 'mountain'.
While in Indonesia, noun phrase has patter of B-A.
For example, in noun phrase 'gunung biru' (which has the same meaning
as 'blue mountain'), word 'biru' (blue) which explains the
color of 'gunung' (mountain) is placed at the end.
Passive and active voices in English doesn't cause
morphological changes to the verb, but in Bahasa it matters. For example, in
English : 'I have broken the pen' --> 'The pen was broken
by me'. But in Bahasa, the word 'broken' could be translated
either as 'mematahkan' in active, or 'dipatahkan' in passive
voice.
Idiom in English is hard to understand by Indonesian people
because in Bahasa Indonesia, the structure of idiom is not that complicated.
For example the idiom 'bring down' : 'bring the PC down'
in Bahasa could be translated falsely as 'membawa PC itu ke bawah',
not 'mematikan PC itu'.
Collocation is ambiguity of the word meaning, depend on the position where it is near to. For example, if the word 'cold' could mean the temperature level or the sick/influenza, depends on what the words near it. For example, it means 'sick' in 'She is having a cold' and it means 'low temperature' in 'It is very cold here!'.
