Old Tajung Keris(es?)

[A. G. Maisey]

The Malay meaning of "randu" was troubling me, so I looked it up in Wilkinson, published 1901, here is the dictionary entry:-

Randu. I. The action of the arm in stirring
up water or anything, when the arm is thrust
into water and worked round and round so as
to set the water in rapid motion. Randukan:
to work up or mix anything by working the
arm round and round in it; Sej, Mai., 122.

[Mickey the Finn]

I often take things for granted; the most recent pertinent instance may have been assuming that the majority of readers of this forum will automatically associate "angkup randu" with a specific design of mendak. I don't get out much, so I've never seen "angkup randu" used in any context except in reference to a mendak. Now that I think of it, this particular design I seem to recall as having been described by Mr. Maisey as something like "an ideal, single-use collapsible shock absorber" (words in quotation marks not a direct quote, but intended to convey my recollection of the meaning I think he intended at the time).
Kapok, I have read, is what the Imperial Japanese Naval and Army Air Services used as the filler in flotation vests/life jackets for their air crews. (I suspect it's been used for the same purpose more recently than that).
I think that I may go ahead and submit a post describing "My Initial Impressions of the General Atmosphere of the 'Keris Warung Kopi' and the Reason for the Delay Between My Registration and My First Post".
My experience with Google Translator has been more hit than miss. For Malay-English, I'd say it's worse than useless. Better to copy and paste any unknown Malay text and translate it as Sundanese, then Indonesian, then Javanese, and then you might have an idea of what it means. For English-Indonesian and the other way around: very, very good. Something like 98.28% of my Feisbuk friends are Indonesian, and none have ever voiced any suspicion that I'm Inggris bule, and not Indonesian. I straight up told one guy that I was using a translator to chat with him, and I had a hard time convincing him that I wasn't pulling his leg. Javanese-English is very hit-or-miss. A very big problem is G.T. doesn't have an understanding of different registers. And then there are terms like "Buta Nawasari/Naswari/Ngawasari"; I still don't know if it's Bengali or Hindi which I ought to translate from. Perhaps it's Balinized Bengali, and therein lies the problem. A while ago, some Balinese danganan name I tried to translate came up as something like "cousin does not know knee broken". The important thing is: for all translations, click the "reverse translation" feature to be sure it makes sense, and that words with more than one possible meaning are being translated into the meaning you intend. This can be tricky; sometimes you need to change the word order to correspond to the syntax of the target language. Sometimes the syntax of colloquial spoken English is incorrect syntax, which causes the translation to make no sense. Sometimes you'll need to use a synonym for the translation to come out right. Google Translator is my default tool to use for all the languages I need to translate from/to (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa); only for Spanish do I sometimes need to use another as an adjunct.

[David]

Originally Posted by Mickey the Finn

My experience with Google Translator has been more hit than miss. For Malay-English, I'd say it's worse than useless. Better to copy and paste any unknown Malay text and translate it as Sundanese, then Indonesian, then Javanese, and then you might have an idea of what it means. For English-Indonesian and the other way around: very, very good. Something like 98.28% of my Feisbuk friends are Indonesian, and none have ever voiced any suspicion that I'm Inggris bule, and not Indonesian. I straight up told one guy that I was using a translator to chat with him, and I had a hard time convincing him that I wasn't pulling his leg. Javanese-English is very hit-or-miss. A very big problem is G.T. doesn't have an understanding of different registers. And then there are terms like "Buta Nawasari/Naswari/Ngawasari"; I still don't know if it's Bengali or Hindi which I ought to translate from. Perhaps it's Balinized Bengali, and therein lies the problem. A while ago, some Balinese danganan name I tried to translate came up as something like "cousin does not know knee broken". The important thing is: for all translations, click the "reverse translation" feature to be sure it makes sense, and that words with more than one possible meaning are being translated into the meaning you intend. This can be tricky; sometimes you need to change the word order to correspond to the syntax of the target language. Sometimes the syntax of colloquial spoken English is incorrect syntax, which causes the translation to make no sense. Sometimes you'll need to use a synonym for the translation to come out right. Google Translator is my default tool to use for all the languages I need to translate from/to (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa); only for Spanish do I sometimes need to use another as an adjunct.

Well Mickey, i am glad you are having some luck with Google Translator through what sounds like an extremely excruciating and convoluted method of multiple transition translations. Though i suspect that your Indonesian friends are either being very polite to you or it is THEY who are pulling your leg. I can't imagine that any native Indonesian speaker could be fooled by a Google translation into believing they are speaking to another native speaker though such translations.

[A. G. Maisey]

Interesting post Mickey. I guess I just don't have the necessary skills to use Google Translator (GT) effectively, because I seldom get any sense out of it.

I actually had cause to use it last week, I had it translate a passage written in BI into English, the reason I did this was because a good friend who lives in Bali --- he's been there about 11 years --- had used Google translator (GT) for the entire text of a Lombok story translated from I don't know what into BI.

Even though my friend has lived in Bali a long time, his BI is pretty rudimentary, I think because he is constantly required to use English for his work, so he uses GT for longer pieces of writing. Anyway, I read the BI text and it was perfectly clear, then I pulled a couple of paragraphs that we had been discussing from the text and ran them through GT. The result I got was a mess, but knowing what it was about because I'd read the original I could understand the GT job.

So yeah, GT makes a mess of syntax, and screws a few other things up, but for a mechanical service, its probably not too bad.


In respect of mendak, my thoughts on the possible function of a mendak as a "shock absorber" applies to all mendak, not just the angkup randu motif. All mendak are lightly made and do collapse under pressure, not like a metuk which solid metal.


The name "Buta Nawa Sari" is Balinese. Buta = evil spirit, but in fact, not all buta are invariably evil; buta inhabit graveyards and forest areas.

The word "Nawa" is commonly understood as "nine", but its other common meaning is as an indefinite length indicator --- you say something is "nawa" and in context that indicates that the something is long, but how long depends upon context.

The word "Sari" is again subject to context, but in all contexts it indicates the "essence" of something. In the use as an attribute of Nawa Sari, that essence is the pandan flower. The problem with the name "Buta Nawa Sari" is two fold, firstly he may not originally have been a buta, secondly the word "nawa" does have at least one other meaning and that other meaning could well solve part of the riddle. Right now the "nawa" problem is being worked on.

One thing appears to be certain, and that is that Nawa Sari is indigenous Balinese.

Kapok is a common product in Jawa, it is used to fill mattresses and pillows.

EDIT Mickey, what you said about GT on English to BI translation seems as if it is correct, I just ran several tests on it, nothing deliberately constructed to confuse, just simple, straight forward statements and what GT produced was better than 90% OK.

[A. G. Maisey]

So, I thought to myself:-

"what are some of usual misunderstandings that occur between native English speakers and native BI speakers?"


I told GT that:-

"I am English and that rujak is far too hot for me, and the gado-gado is no better"

and what GT translated that as was:-

"Saya orang Inggris dan rujak itu terlalu panas untuk saya, dan gado-gado tidak lebih baik"


which is acceptably OK, but not what anybody who speaks Indonesian would have either understood, or said --- particularly if the Englishman was sitting at the same table and drinking copious quantities of water with his eyes and nose running and his throat & belly on fire.

Of course, it is possible to lead GT down an incorrect path by pretending that it is a real live person, but no matter how much it might like to be, it cannot ever eat rujak or gado-gado.

[ariel]

Google Translate is a dangerous program to use. Mostly it provides pretty comprehensible translations of simple texts. But in ambiguous cases the final result comes out as something ranging from hysterically funny to totally insane. Often both.

On this Forum I have seen GTs of Russian texts, and one of my favorite ones is a translation of “shashka”, a Caucasian guardless saber. There is also an almost 100% identical homophonic word ”shashki”, which means “checkers”.
Almost always, a sentence” This shashka was made...” is translated as “ This checker was made...” Go figure:-)))
I can go on and on with it.
Caveat emptor!

[Mickey the Finn]

I've read on this forum that Indonesians can value being polite to the extent that it might even be considered a fault; this brings to mind the proverbial "insidious Chinaman", smiling and nodding to humour the poor, unfortunate gwai lo, who is clearly a feebleminded simpleton. Ignorance, it seems, is a bliss which the knowledgeable shall never enjoy.

David, as a Bible student,

extremely excruciating and convoluted method[s] of multiple transition translations

are old hat to me; it's what I do.

ariel, the example you've provided to demonstrate the importance of checking the translation to ensure that it makes sense is appreciated. If only the people who wrote up the installation instructions for V.C.R.s back in the day had taken the time...

Mr. Maisey, I may have gone off the rails entirely here, and if I have, please let me know in unambiguous terms. After having transliterated the Roman letters "nawa" into Hindi Devanagari script through G.T, and then reverse translated, I got "Nava". Translating the same Devanagari script from Bengali to English, I got "New".
Transliteration can pose a whole set of problems which must be solved before translation can begin; attempting to transliterate and translate what may or may not be loan words from some other language, the identity of which is based on nothing more than conjecture...
The "English alphabet" contains the letters V(vee) and W(double 'U'; in some other languages the name of the letter translates as "double V", or "twin V"), both representing distinct vocalized sounds. English has no "in-between" sound which might be described as a "softened V, but not quite a W". I may or may not have a problem with not being able to transliterate accurately, which may or may not have sent my train of thought onto a sidetrack.

The name "Buta Nawa Sari" is Balinese. Buta = evil spirit, but in fact, not all buta are invariably evil; buta inhabit graveyards and forest areas.

The word "Nawa" is commonly understood as "nine", but its other common meaning is as an indefinite length indicator --- you say something is "nawa" and in context that indicates that the something is long, but how long depends upon context.

The word "Sari" is again subject to context, but in all contexts it indicates the "essence" of something. In the use as an attribute of Nawa Sari, that essence is the pandan flower. The problem with the name "Buta Nawa Sari" is two fold, firstly he may not originally have been a buta, secondly the word "nawa" does have at least one other meaning and that other meaning could well solve part of the riddle. Right now the "nawa" problem is being worked on.

One thing appears to be certain, and that is that Nawa Sari is indigenous Balinese.

To begin getting to the point: is "new" one of the other meanings of the word "nawa", in addition to "nine", and as an "indefinite length indicator"?
If not, what other meanings does the word have, that you know of?
If a Buta is "new", would (or could) this change the nature of it's Sari/essence?
If "not all Buta are invariably evil", do they all nevertheless have an inclination toward evil?
Are all Buta invariably male? In the hypothetical case of a female Buta, would the word be spelled differently (as with putra/putri)?
If a Buta was not originally a Buta, what was he previously, and how did he become a Buta?
I don't know much about flowers except that I've loved the fragrance of bunga kamboja since I was a kid. I've read that for the Javanese, it's something like a funeral flower, like white lilies in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. I won't even ask about the pandan flower (because it may be crucial to understanding, and may require more typing than you have time or patience for), but if you care to elaborate...
I'm aware that your time is valuable. If you know of any resources where I might find answers, like books in Gajah Mada Universitas library, for example, there's a librarian at the community college two blocks away whom I would just love to put to the trouble of trying to arrange an inter-library loan.
Thank you for the information you've provided.