I recently saw this sign in the washroom at the Bangar ferry terminal in Termburong:
The Malay says 'Throw rubbish into the dustbin provided'.
I wonder why the extra word disediakan ('provided') is used in Malay? It doesn't seem to add anything extra to the message. So I wonder why the writer in Malay felt that it was necessary?
The level of complexity and allusion in some cartoons is stunning. Take the following Dilbert cartoon:
It involves two people, Alice and Walter. Alice's statement "I hate Mondays more than Garfield" is intended to mean "I hate Mondays even more than Garfield hates Mondays", but Walter understands it by its alternative meaning "I hate Mondays even more than I hate Garfield".
However, in the next pane, by making an allusion to Garfield and lasagna ownership, Walter is showing that he knows all about Garfield, so he is basically saying that he is perfectly aware of Garfield's dislike of Mondays. In other words, he is saying that his misunderstanding of Alice was quite deliberate.
Alice understands this, which is why she gets angry. But in the final pane, her threat not to talk to him is taken by Walter as a promise; it is what he was hoping for.
On first reading this cartoon, I failed to grasp much of that; and it was only on reading the explanation on Language Log (here) that I understood it. Partly, that is because I am not very familiar with Garfield and his dislike of Mondays and disregard for ownership of lasagna. But I'm not sure I would have got it even if I had known about these things. I suspect most of us miss the subtle meanings of lots and lots of cartoons.
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
