The role of translations in the development of modern Malay literature
Holger Warnk’s 2007 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society argues that translations from European, Chinese, Urdu, and Arabic sources were a foundational but systematically overlooked force in the emergence of modern Malay literature between 1850 and 1950, serving as the vehicle through which the novel form, realistic prose style, and modern concepts of authorship entered both the Malay Peninsula and the Netherlands East Indies.
Summary
The article addresses a significant gap in Malay literary historiography, which has traditionally traced the modern Malay novel to indigenous roots—oral lipur lara tales and written hikayat—or, in the Indonesian case, to the colonial publishing house Balai Pustaka, while ignoring the constitutive role of translations. Warnk draws on Ian Watt’s theory of the novel’s rise in eighteenth-century Europe to frame translations as the mechanism through which bourgeois reading habits, realistic prose, and the concept of individual authorship were transmitted to Southeast Asian literary cultures. He contrasts the Indonesian case, where Peranakan Chinese and Indo-European translators produced large numbers of Malay-language translations from the 1870s onward, with the Malay Peninsula, where the absence of a significant Indo-European readership, the dominance of the Jawi script, and trade networks oriented toward South Asia and the Middle East rather than the Dutch archipelago produced a distinct but parallel trajectory toward literary modernity.
The article then examines the specific institutional and commercial mechanisms through which translations reached Malayan readers. The Sultan Idris Training College’s Malay Translation Bureau, established in 1924, is analysed as a state-sponsored effort to produce schoolbooks and popular readings, staffed by figures such as Za’ba and Ahmad Murad Nasaruddin, whose translations of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Conan Doyle shaped the literary training of a generation of Malay teachers. Outside this institutional framework, commercial publishers in Singapore, Penang, and Kota Bharu translated works from Urdu, Arabic, and English sources—often via intermediary languages—catering to a growing urban literate middle class. Warnk demonstrates that these translations introduced not only new genres but also modern publishing ethics, including the assertion of copyright and the rejection of plagiarism.
The article’s broader argument is that the first two modern Malay novels, published in 1922, were themselves perceived by contemporary readers as translations, and that the entire infrastructure of modern Malay prose—its vocabulary, grammar, narrative conventions, and publishing practices—was built upon translated models. Warnk challenges the prevailing historiographical narrative that modern Malay literature developed ex nihilo from traditional forms, arguing instead that translations were an active, constitutive element of literary modernity that enabled local authors to write in new genres as an expression of their own creativity.
Key Findings
- The Malay Translation Bureau at Sultan Idris Training College produced at least 48 titles in its Malay School Series (1924–1936) and 64 titles in its Malay Home Library Series (abandoned 1957), with print runs of 5,000 to 10,000 copies per title (pp. 102–103).
- Syair Indera Sebaha, a Malay adaptation of the Urdu musical comedy Inder Sabha, saw six editions between 1889 and 1901; its publisher Haji Muhammad Siraj registered the work with colonial authorities and threatened legal action against unauthorized copyists, representing an early assertion of copyright in the Malay Peninsula (pp. 97–99).
- The Hikayat Gul Bakawali, translated from Urdu by Munsyi Syeikh Muhammad Ali bin Ghulam Hussein al-Hindi, also saw six editions between 1875 and 1905 (p. 100).
- Ahmad Nawawi bin Muhammad’s two Tarzan novels (1933, 1935) were translations of Arabic versions rather than English originals, with the first comprising 453 pages in five parts and the second 551 pages, published at the height of Johnny Weissmuller’s Hollywood films (p. 110).
- The first two modern Malay novels—Muhammad bin Muhammad Said’s Ceritera Kecurian Lima Million Ringgit (1922, Kota Bharu) and Syed Syeikh al-Hadi’s Hikayat Faridah Hanom—were both perceived by contemporary readers as translations, though their source texts have never been identified (p. 101).
- Syed Mahmud b. Syed Abdulkadir al-Hindi (1865–1913) authored the first Malay–Arabic dictionary and produced numerous schoolbook translations from English (e.g., Ilmu Kejadian 1887, Kejadian Selerah Anggota 1891, Hikayat Dunia 1894) that remained in use in government schools for over twenty years (p. 96).
Conclusion
Warnk’s definitive takeaway is that translations must be recognised as an artistic expression constitutive of modern Malay literature, not merely as derivative imitations of European models. He argues that the prevailing historiography—which traces the modern Malay novel exclusively to indigenous oral and written traditions—cannot account for the emergence of a foreign genre like the novel without acknowledging the external literary inputs that provided its formal and thematic templates. Translations opened new literary worlds, trained writers in new prose styles, and established the publishing ethics of authorship, copyright, and anti-plagiarism that underpin modern literary culture in the region.
Context
- The article draws primarily on bibliographic and archival sources including Proudfoot’s catalogue of early Malay printed books (1993), Za’ba’s surveys of modern Malay literature (1939, 1941), and Abdullah Sanusi’s study of the SITC publishing office (1966), supplemented by facsimile reproductions of title pages and impressums from early Malay publications.
- Historiographically, the article challenges the “ex nihilo” narrative dominant in Malaysian literary historiography (exemplified by Othman and Abdullah 2003, published under Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka auspices) and aligns with a broader postcolonial turn that recognises local agency and cross-cultural literary exchange in the formation of modern literatures.