'Beautiful Eyes' offers a glimpse into Indonesian short stories

Beautiful Eyes - Kompas Best Short Stories 2001; Translated by Rebecca Fanany; Kompas Book Publisher, 2001; pp xli + 191; Rp 35,000

JAKARTA (JP): For the ninth time since 1992, with an absence in 1998, Kompas has published an annual selection of its "best" stories printed in its Sunday edition.

This year's collection is special as it comes out along with its English translation. A wise decision indeed because, as the selection committee has put it, "In an increasingly global society, in the face of the declining reputation of our people and nation in the international community, we need something we can 'sell' to the rest of the world other than sensationalized news people 'read' in the print and electronic media."

As much as stories are taken as the reflection of a society, this will be an effective way to introduce a particular nation to the outside world.

A short story, or any story for that matter, may be interesting to read because of its plot, its characters, its theme or its setting. When we read a good story, we feel as if we were in a certain place, meeting certain people with certain traits of character. It is this feeling of going into another world, the imagined world created by the author, that makes reading a story a fascinating activity.

It is interesting to note that except for one story, which is written by a Balinese writer, the other 15 short stories in Beautiful Eyes have been written by writers from either Sumatra or Java.

This may reflect the taste of the selection committee or, perhaps, the fact that stories by writers in the east of Indonesia are few and far between. In the case of the former, it would be a good idea if the introduction, which dwells lengthily on the selection process, also includes the selection criteria so that the readers may also be convinced of the choice made by the selection committee.

Of all the 16 short stories in this collection, 10 have a clear reference to the places in which they are set, eight domestically and two abroad, in Kathmandu, Nepal and the foot of Mt. Fuji in Japan. The other six present only events and people. Unfortunately, even when a setting of place is mentioned in a story, it does not lend any local color to the story. Names of places appear without much effect on the story.

It seems that the writers are more interested in people and what they do rather than where something takes place. As a matter of fact, a proper setting of place would have created a particular atmosphere and made the theme of a story more easily understood. After all, events need a specific place to occur and specific events occur only in specific places and involve specific people. This is what is generally lacking in Indonesian short stories and in this regard the stories in Beautiful Eyes are unfortunately no exception.

Beautiful Eyes contain translated stories. Translated stories may be read with or without reference to the original texts. In the case of the former, a reader may hope to get not only the content but also the spirit of the stories in the original language. In this regard, the translation's skill plays a key role because a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of a sentence or a phrase may be misleading.

Read through as a translation piece, Beautiful Eyes, despite the generic shortcomings of Indonesian short stories, is a pleasure to read in that it presents a slice of contemporary Indonesian life that allows foreign readers to have a glimpse of what prevails in today's Indonesian society.

Unfortunately, again, when this collection is read against the original version, there are some disturbing points that a more careful translation process may have avoided. The following are a few examples of these disturbing points in some of the translated stories:

In Budi Darma Beautiful Eyes the last sentence reads: "I am sure mother heard my final words." (p. 8). Compare this with the original :Saya yakin ibu tidak sempat mendengar kalimat saya terakhir., which reads in English:" I'm sure mother did not have time to hear my final words."

Then in Jujur Prananto's Jakarta is Silent in the Middle of the Night, the last sentence reads: "My God! I never told father we were moving to Tanahabang." (p. 19) Originally this part reads: "Ya Allah! Saya belum pernah kirim kabar ke bapak kalau kita sudah pindah dari Tanah Abang!" (My God! I never told father we had moved from Tanahabang.)

Another example is in Yanusa Nugroho's Umairah. The original sentence "Seorang ibu dengan kelembutannya menggendong si Umi" has the English equivalent of "A woman gently picked Umi up." (p. 28). What is lost here is the writer's attempt to show that Umi, who has just lost her mother, receives the gentleness of a mother from an unknown, yet kind lady. The sentence could have read "A woman, with the gentleness of a mother, picked Umi up."

In another story, a certificate of patriotism is chosen for "sertifikat perintis kemerdekaan", which may better be translated as "an independence struggle pioneer certificate." A certificate of patriotism does not tell as much about what one has done to one's country as the latter certificate. Unless the reader understands what being a pioneer in a struggle for independence is, the message in Elegy for Anwar Saeedy will be missed.

It is a pity that this collection of translated short stories, which actually shows good translation in general, should be flawed by some inappropriately translated sentences or phrases, which in some stories are found at important parts and may therefore lead to a different interpretation and understanding of the stories concerned. Perhaps, an Indonesian editor with a good mastery of english should have been hired in the first place to ensure that an embarrassing blooper like Translator by Rebecca Fanany on the inside title page could have been avoided.

-- Lie Huais a lecturer in the English Dept., School of Letters, at the National University, Jakarta.