What can Bahasa Indonesia say that the German language can not? This is the question that the Magazine for Translated Literature (Magazin für übersetzte Literatur) TraLaLit asked the translator Sabine Müller. She went into raptures: In Bahasa Indonesia, she said, “things can be conveyed wonderfully indirectly”. And she added that "the sound of pleading or reprimanding is less crude”. Some people falsely claim that Indonesian is an easy language to learn. But if social hierarchies are implied, if one of the many regional languages or the slang of young people are involved, or if content has to be developed from the context, then translating reaches its limits quickly.

How does it actually look the other way around? What view on the German language does a translator of German literary texts into Indonesian have? Where do the linguistic pitfalls hide here? Are there perhaps parallels or are the respective challenges completely different? Tiya Hapitiawati, who translated Brecht, Zweig and currently Musil, also has to deal intensively with the context before deciding, for example, how to translate a “du” or a ”Sie” in a salutation. When translating classic texts, on the other hand, she has to research the meanings of terms that sometimes no longer exist in today's German.

During this dialogue, our two guests will use text examples to explain about the challenges of translating from both languages - German and Indonesian - into the other. But they will also talk about their current readings from the other literature and they will recommend to us their favourite books that are still waiting to be translated!

Tiya Hapitiawati translates literary texts from German into Indonesian. In 2016 she completed her Masters in Linguistics at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta. Among other things, she translated "Kleiner Mann, was nun?" by Hans Fallada (Moooi Pustaka, 2019), "Ungeduld des Herzens" by Stefan Zweig (Moooi Pustaka, 2020) and "Der letzte Sommer" by Ricarda Huch (Moooi Pustaka, 2020). For an anthology about the Paris Commune, she translated Bertolt Brecht's poem “Resolution der Kommunarde” (2021).

Sabine Müller lives as a translator and editor in Cologne. She organizes and coordinates international cultural programs in the fields of translation and literature, among others in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and the Weltlesebühne. From 2002 to 2006 she was head of the German language department at the Polytechnic in Bandung, West Java, and worked with the language and program department of the Goethe Institute in Bandung and Jakarta. Sabine Müller translated works by Leila S. Chudori (Pulang, 2015), Eka Kurniawan (Cantik itu Luka, 2019), and Iksaka Banu (Semua untuk Hindia, 2020), among others.

Zum Weiterlesen in deutscher Sprache | Drei längere Beiträge von Sabine Müller, erschienen im Indonesien Magazin Online:

Die Leseprobe »Die Hand des Ratu Adil« aus dem Kurzgeschichtenband von Iksaka Banu, in deutscher Übersetzung von Sabine Müller, gespickt mit einigen Zusatzinformationen | vom 01.08 2021

»dann gilt nur ein wort: widerstand!« – graswurzellieder des indonesischen Lyrikers Wiji Thukul - Buchbesprechung | vom 13.06.2019

Vom Wayang-Held bis zur Comic-Akademi | vom 22.02.2016