20 May 2015

berfikir di luar kotak

I saw this headline for an article on page 11 of Media Permata of 18 May 2015:

This can be translated as:

Young people of Sabah urged to think out of the box

Of course, berfikir di luar kotak ('think outside the box') is a direct calque from English.

It seems sad to me, when Malay has such a rich range of idioms and proverbs, that direct translations are taken from English rather than using something indigenous. But maybe this is wrong. Perhaps absorbing idioms from English (and other languages) serves to enrich the Malay stock, so there is nothing wrong in using new idioms wherever you find them.

One other thing about my translation: I used 'young people' rather than 'youths' as an equivalent for belia, as I feel that 'youths' tends to have a negative connotation in English. But that is not how 'youths' is used in the region; so maybe I should have followed local usage and just gone for:

Youths of Sabah urged to thing out of the box