Indonesian Retail & E-Commerce Translation

About the Indonesian Language

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. It is a standardized register of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Indonesian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Most Indonesians, aside from speaking the national language, are fluent in any of more than 700 indigenous local languages; examples include Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese, which are commonly used at home.

The nationalist movement that ultimately brought Indonesian to its national language status rejected Dutch from the outset. However, the rapid disappearance of Dutch was a very unusual case compared with other colonized countries, where the colonial language generally has continued to function as the language of politics, bureaucracy, education, technology, and other important areas for a significant time after independence. Soenjono Dardjowidjojo even goes so far as to say that "Indonesian is perhaps the only language that has achieved the status of a national language in its true sense" since it truly dominates in all spheres of Indonesian society. The ease with which Indonesia eliminated the language of its former colonial power can perhaps be explained as much by Dutch policy as by Indonesian nationalism, though. In marked contrast to the French, Spanish and Portuguese, who pursued an assimilation colonial policy, or even the British, the Dutch did not attempt to spread their language among the indigenous population. In fact, they consciously prevented the language from being spread by refusing to provide education, especially in Dutch, to the native Indonesians so they would not come to see themselves as equals. Moreover, the Dutch wished to prevent the Indonesians from elevating their perceived social status by taking on elements of Dutch culture. Thus, until the 1930s, they maintained a minimalist regime and allowed Malay to spread quickly throughout the archipelago.

Dutch dominance at that time covered nearly all aspects, with official forums requiring the use of Dutch, although since the Youth Congress (1928) the use of Indonesian as the national language was agreed on as one of the tools in the pro-independence struggle. As of it, Mohammad Hoesni Thamrin inveighed actions underestimating Indonesian. After some criticism and protests, the use of Indonesian was allowed since the Volksraad sessions held in July 1938. By the time they tried to counter the spread of Malay by teaching Dutch to the natives, it was too late, and in 1942, the Japanese conquered Indonesia and outlawed the use of the Dutch language. Three years later, the Indonesians themselves formally abolished the language and established Bahasa Indonesia as the national language of the new nation.

Indonesian Translation Expertise

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) has relatively simple grammar with no verb conjugation, no grammatical gender, and no plurals formed by inflection, but translation difficulty lies in its use of affixes — prefixes, suffixes, and circumfixes — that fundamentally change word meaning. Formal written Indonesian differs substantially from colloquial usage, and legal documents use a distinct register with Dutch and Arabic loanwords. Ambiguity in pronoun usage and levels of politeness require careful contextual interpretation.

Indonesian is written in the Latin alphabet with 26 standard letters and no special diacritics in common use. The spelling system was standardised in 1972 under the Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System (EYD), but older documents may use pre-reform Dutch-influenced spelling conventions.

Common Indonesian Documents

Indonesian documents commonly requiring translation include the akta kelahiran (birth certificate), kartu tanda penduduk (national identity card), ijazah (academic diploma), and surat keterangan catatan kepolisian (police clearance certificate).

NAATI offers certification for Indonesian translators, and due to geographic proximity and strong bilateral ties, Indonesian is one of the more commonly available NAATI language pairs in Australia. Many Australian universities also teach Indonesian, supporting a relatively healthy pool of qualified translators.

About the Indonesian Language

Indonesian is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world with over 270 million speakers, yet it is the native language of almost none of them — it was deliberately chosen as a unifying national language in 1928 to bridge over 700 local languages across the archipelago. The language has no verb conjugation, no grammatical tenses, and no gendered nouns, making its basic grammar among the simplest of any major world language. Indonesian and Malay are so closely related that speakers can largely understand each other, yet the two languages have borrowed extensively from different colonial sources — Indonesian from Dutch, and Malay from English.