Translator Lindsay knows the power of language

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor/Melbourne, Australia

A life, like a journey, can continue on a relatively straight line for years on end, with only the occasional jolt and stumble, and still amount to a good experience.

Some, however, experience a lot of sharp turns and zigzags, or move at the dizzying speed of a roller-coaster.

Jennifer Lindsay's journey may not be as frantic as the latter, but she certainly has taken some sharp detours. The first, and the most drastic, was her encounter with Indonesia.

It was in Yogyakarta that she was awe-struck by what she found.

"I went there in 1970, a young and impressionable graduate in English literature, not knowing a thing about Indonesia, let alone Java. But I became totally crazy about things Javanese, and ended up staying until 1976, studying the language and the culture, especially the gamelan."

Lindsay began studying Bahasa Indonesia. But she quickly realized she needed to study Javanese if she wanted to communicate effectively with her friends.

It was the in-the-field training that has stood her well throughout her life.

"Everything I know about language learning, I learned it during those years in Yogya, not in university," she said during the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali.

Among readers in Indonesia, Lindsay is particularly well-known for her excellent translation of Goenawan Mohamad's weekly essays Catatan Pinggir (Sidelines) in Tempo newsmagazine and another, more recent collection, Conversations with Difference.

Being an accomplished translator is but one facet of her life. Yet it is a very important one, since it contains most of the recurring aspects of her journey: language, culture and the Javanese connection.

Those initial six years in Yogyakarta prepared her for Harvard University, where she did a Master's of Arts program in Southeast Asian History, while teaching Indonesian language and gamelan music and performance. She then went on to do her doctorate in classical and contemporary Javanese culture at Sydney University.

Lindsay was born in New Zealand, and became an Australian citizen in her adulthood.

"But I have lived longer in Yogya than in any place in Australia," she said. "My dearest friends are in Indonesia. These are people who have seen me in so many stages of my life, as a silly young girl, a silly older girl, employed and unemployed, and many other different things."

What of these other "different things"?

Lindsay has worn several hats, one being as cultural counselor at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. "That was the first extended time, three years, from 1989 to 1992, I've lived in Jakarta," she said.

She began translating Goenawan's Catatan Pinggir in 1992, and continued throughout the years she worked as art administrator for the Ford Foundation, from 1995 until 2000. And even now, in her post as a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, she continues the translations.

"I regard it as my weekly language lesson. I look forward to it," she confessed, adding that she liked translating things that are self-consciously aware of language, and the development of language. "That's why I very much enjoy the challenge of translating Goenawan's prose."

She tries to keep close to the Indonesian in her translations.

"If he is vague, then I want to be vague also. I don't want to clean it up and make it look better or smoother," she said.

In trying to keep very close to the rhythm of his work, she often agonizes over the place of a comma in a sentence.

"I want to reflect with my careful choice of words, his brilliant play with words, with coining words."

Another writer whose works Lindsay enjoys translating is Linus Suryadi.

"Here again, I see a kind of consciousness and experimentation with language. He works between Javanese and Indonesian, working within the hegemony of Indonesian expressing his Javanese voice," she said.

"I like that kind of writing."

Lindsay is acutely aware of the power associated with language. English, Lindsay says, quoting Lawrence Venuti, is a language of power, of hegemony -- "English is the most translated language worldwide, but one of the least translated into."

Writers who do not write in English wish to have their writings available in English through translation. It often puts them in a vulnerable position of being in the service of the translating culture. The inequities often trouble Lindsay.

"I come from New Zealand, a small country, but that happens to be in the hegemony of English," she explained, adding that those born into the privilege of English were the least likely to be exposed to other kinds of languages and thinking.

"It troubles me because I care about language. And I see the arrogance of English in the world, and English language speakers who are unaware of other languages."

To Lindsay, the act of translating is a very conscious act.

"When I translate sometimes I'm aware that I'm choosing a word that's very much my own English, not American or British English. Sometimes I do that quite consciously, to give readers a jolt of recognition that this is a translation."

She would like to see translation receiving more appreciation in Indonesia, such as a Khatulistiwa Award for at least one Indonesian book translated into another language, to give Indonesian writings a higher profile.

In her work at the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore, she is now writing a book on issues of language and performance in Southeast Asia. She is thus continuously alert about what is happening in the region, particularly in Singapore and Malaysia.

What happens after the publication of the book? She does not know yet. A more gentle flow in the journey, perhaps?