Translate This: Commensurate

There shouldn't be much of a problem to translate this word. The translation of it can be found in many reliable English-Malay dictionary, most of the time they put the meaning as: setara, sepadan.


But I would like to highlight one habit of many Malaysians that I suspect that their confusion may be due to how the word is spelled. Many English words that end with -ate normally indicate that they are a verb, but not in this case. It is an adjective not a verb, therefore it doesn't take a tense.


Here are some examples of how Malaysians would use 'commensurate' in a sentence:

Here is an example of a correct sentence using the word commensurate:

I just thought that this is a very good subject matter to be highlighted somewhere, and why not here.

Admittedly I had thought it was a verb too.

Grammar Matters: Merbahaya or Berbahaya?

There are more than one mistakes in this picture.
But for now, let's just look at 'merbahaya'.

We are all born with one particular organ in our body that is naturally lazy. But that laziness understandably, may be culminated from tens of thousands of years of effort to create phonetically correct sound to naming things, describing acts, categorizing things/acts and so on. I am talking about our tongue, the only inside-body organ that you can see moving without any visual aid. (As a digression, try looking at it in the mirror and move it about, imagine it as a creature from some scary alien movie stuck in your mouth. Gross?)

What I’m trying to say or what I suspect is ‘merbahaya’ has been the result of our lazy tongue. It may have to do with the dialect of certain group of the population but generally it has spread and become common in all of Malaysia because everybody thought it was the correct one. Unfortunately it was not. ‘Berbahaya’ is the correct word. Unlike for example, in the state of Perak, where they pronounce durian as ‘deghoyan’ (‘gh’ is very Frenchy sounding ‘r’ as in Rue de Savoy) but so far it remains and stays a Perak dialect.

‘Berbahaya’ is a derived adjective (kata sifat terbitan) that comes from the root word ‘bahaya’, a noun that means danger, prefixed with ‘ber’ which in this case means ‘to have’ or ‘to contain’. Further corroborates this explanation is the fact that there has never been the prefix ‘mer’ in Malay. There isn’t really. ‘Ber’ becomes ‘mer’ here simply because it’s easier to pronounce it although the difference is only subtle. To prove it, do this yourself: Repeatedly, utter those two words one after another. You’ll notice ‘merbahaya’ is the easier one. So, it looks like all the hard work of our ancestors to have certain rules in naming things just goes down the gutter because of our laziness. These days it gets worse. Vowels have gradually become useless. This is completely embraced by the new generation, thanks to technology.

Fortunately: Many Bahasa Melayu teachers now realize that and begin to emphasize its importance through the many blogs they now operate. I am one who visits them regularly for updates and references.

Unfortunately: ‘Merbahaya’ is still in Kamus Dewan, although it is actually a lazy version of ‘marabahaya’ and not ‘berbahaya’. Take note and don’t get confused.

In the end, our tongue suffers from our lack of attention to take care and use it the right way. If only man takes care of it the way they take care of another particular prized organ of theirs, and the way they splash portions of their monthly income the moment they realize its function and performance weren’t as explosive as when they were young, things wouldn’t be as complicated.

I am not talking about organs with black and white keyboard.

Translate This: Best-sellers or Best-selling

Please look at this picture, at the words ‘LAKU KERAS’. Please try to do a back translation to figure out what the owner of this store is trying to say. This was seen at a leading chain bookstore (no names will be dropped here, dangerous, you know).

Did you manage it? Did you only manage to come up with ‘hard sell’? I don't blame you and I’m telling you, it’s not funny when the intended meaning is actually ‘Best-sellers’.

I scratched my head the whole night the day that my fellow translator posted this in our FB translators group. How they even came to think and suggested ‘keras’ is baffling me. Didn’t they know what ‘keras’ is? Look into any dictionary, nothing else comes up but ‘hard’. This is blatant, irresponsible and shabby translation job. I was lucky to have strong hair follicles, or otherwise my scalp would be exposed and as shiny as the behind of a new Corning heat-tolerant glass pan by now.

I do not think anybody will agree to what it was supposed to mean in the first place.

Even ‘laku’ in this case is very arguable. ‘Laku’ is the ‘Bahasa Basahan’ (informal) of ‘Laris’. 'Laris' is the more appropriate word, but when back-translated into English it means ‘Hot selling’. So, what is ‘best-selling’ then? You have to ask yourself this: What is ‘best’ in Malay? We already know what ‘laris’ is.

Unlike English, Malay does not have superlative adjective in the form English does as in good, gooder, goodest or bad, badder, baddest. (It's a joke, don't kill it, ok). In Malay, for an adjective to be superlatively comparative, it needs to be combined with the word ‘lebih’ to indicate superiority and ‘paling’ to indicate the highest level superiority, which is equivalent to ‘more’ and ‘most’ in English, respectively.

So, after all the above explanation, wasn’t it logical and sensible that ‘best-selling’ or ‘best-sellers’ be translated as ‘paling laris’? Is that so hard for that particular shabby-shoddy-doo guy, who translated it into ‘LAKU KERAS’, to at least ask around? Or maybe he/she did, but I think their darts are played on a chess board instead.

‘Paling Laris’ can even be simplified to ‘Terlaris’. A practice of which is one of the rule of thumb in doing translation: simplification without missing the context. So, in the end:

Best-selling (or Best-sellers) = Terlaris

To think that the institution involved is a bookseller, one who should be part of championing literature, is what makes me angry.

I was angry, then angrier, now angriest!


Here... in smiley form (how ironic! It doesn't even smile but it's still called smiley)