Indonesian

Indonesian is native to Indonesia and East Timor. It has approximately 43 million native speakers who reside primarily in urban areas as well as 156 million second-language speakers who tend to live in more rural areas.

Indonesian is very similar to Malaysian-also known as Bahasa Melayu-though it differs in spelling pronunciation and vocabulary.

Specifics to consider when translating Indonesian

When translating into Indonesian, it’s very important to keep in mind that the population of Indonesia consists of distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Although Indonesian is taught in schools, each of these communities has its own views and opinions that need to be taken into consideration as part of the translation process.

While a certain term might be acceptable to one group, it might be considered offensive to another group. For example, the word “Cina” is a direct translation for the word China, it is used when referring to China as a country as well as when referring to the people of China.

Due to a long history of general and political misuse, however, this word is now considered derogatory; particularly within the Chinese Indonesian community. As a result, the word “Tionghoa” is now more commonly used to represent Indonesians of Chinese origins and “Tiongkok” to represent the country of China itself.

How 1-StopAsia works?

At 1-StopAsia we have native in-house Indonesian staff who will carefully monitor your projects to avoid any unwanted misunderstandings.

Our rigorous quality assurance procedure ensures that your translation is translated and reviewed by a native Indonesian translator with a specific subject-matter specialty before it is proofread by a second translator. This guarantees that every detail of the document is checked, double-checked, and quality ensured.