{"id":2022,"date":"2017-10-20T14:17:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T14:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/seac\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2019-01-29T20:26:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T20:26:01","slug":"toer-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Toer in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Shannon Bush<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cTo explain the reasons, the dynamics, the causes, the forces at work in pushing history forward without dehumanizing or depersonalizing it is Pramoedya\u2019s great achievement.\u00a0 \u2026 History is not the background to these stories, it is the protagonist.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>
\n-from Max Lane\u2019s Introduction to his English-language translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer\u2019s House of Glass<\/em> (Rumah Kaca)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

My appreciation of the scope of the Indonesian nationalist movement and the seemingly intractable forces arrayed to defeat it came to life with the introduction of one figure: not Sukarno, not Hatta, but Minke.\u00a0 For those, like me, whose Bahasa Indonesia was not up to the task of working through a series of four highly sophisticated novels, ones whose complexity lay in their subtle deconstruction of the material processes of colonialism and of the rationalizations used to mask a crude and racialized exercise of power, we owe a debt of gratitude to Max Lane.\u00a0 With his translations of the \u201cBuru Quartet,\u201d the series of four novels comprised of This Earth of Mankind<\/em>, Child of All Nations<\/em>, Footsteps<\/em>, and House of Glass<\/em>, Dr. Lane is largely responsible for introducing Pramoedya Ananta Toer to the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n

The main protagonist throughout the series (present even in his absence in House of Glass<\/em>) is Raden Mas Minke, an indispensable guide who takes readers through the unfolding of Indonesia\u2019s long twentieth-century.\u00a0 While following the progression of his life, the reader attains an affective awareness of what early anti-colonial nationalists were up against and experiences a dawning realization that the outcomes which now seem inevitable were not preordained.\u00a0\u00a0 Students of history are accustomed to looking back at what seem discrete events, often fixed as points on a timeline.\u00a0 This stance of certainty about the past comes up against the world Pramoedya reveals in which characters have to decide who to trust, weigh decisions, organize, and take risks not knowing what would become of their efforts.\u00a0 Minke\u2019s world of the unfolding present with its paths not taken, almost-successful efforts, and just-missed connections leaves the reader with an \u201cepistemic vertigo:\u201d we know how things turned out from history books, but the novels\u2019 recitation seems much more real precisely because of its uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Temporal perspective shifts when we read Minke\u2019s \u201ccontemporary\u201d judgments of Kartini or witness the internal division of one of the earliest \u201cNative\u201d organizations as a result of self-dealing.\u00a0 The reader is forced to acknowledge that history unfolds in fits and starts and is subject to the limitations and foibles of individual leaders.\u00a0 Even the sense one has of the colonial project as an impersonal, monolithic force is shown in the final novel, House of Glass<\/em>, to be mistaken:\u00a0 it was a human endeavor, conceived of and carried out by individuals.\u00a0 To lose sight of that, Pramoedya\u2019s work implies, is to lose sight of the tragedy of colonialism.<\/p>\n

The creative and intellectual effort necessary to translate literary works of such importance was brought home to me earlier this year when my Indonesian language class devoted an entire period to translating just two paragraphs from House of Glass<\/em>.\u00a0 All five of us had a different way of rendering the sentence \u201cRobert Suurhof\u2019s stay in jail did not at all lessen my troubles\u201d from the original Indonesian, each with a slightly different meaning. \u00a0Even our language instructor, who grew up in Jakarta, was unsure whether a metaphor in the second paragraph was an authorial creation or an adage from another part of the country. \u00a0Another sentence required close familiarity with a subplot that would only appear later in the story.\u00a0 Dr. Lane confronted these choices word after word and sentence after sentence.\u00a0 Moreover, faithfulness to the author\u2019s objectives, not just word choice, required an intimate understanding of Pramoedya\u2019s intentions and artistry.<\/p>\n

You can hear Dr. Lane talk about \u201cPramoedya Ananta Toer, the Origins of the Indonesian Nation and Radical Politics Today\u201d on Friday, November 3rd<\/sup> from 1:00 \u2013 2:30 pm in Thomson 317 and about \u201cIndonesian Politics Since Jokowi: Class and New Ideological Contestations\u201d on Thursday, November 2nd<\/sup> from 3:30 \u2013 5:00 pm, also in Thomson 317.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Shannon Bush   \u201cTo explain the reasons, the dynamics, the causes, the forces at work in pushing history forward without dehumanizing or depersonalizing it is Pramoedya\u2019s great achievement.\u00a0 \u2026 History is not the background to these stories, it is the protagonist.\u201d\u00a0 -from Max Lane\u2019s Introduction to his English-language translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer\u2019s House<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":541,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news","region-indonesia","research-theme-colonialism","research-theme-history","research-theme-indonesia","research-theme-literature","research-theme-post-colonialism","research-theme-southeast-asia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nToer in Translation - Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Toer in Translation - Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Shannon Bush   \u201cTo explain the reasons, the dynamics, the causes, the forces at work in pushing history forward without dehumanizing or depersonalizing it is Pramoedya\u2019s great achievement.\u00a0 \u2026 History is not the background to these stories, it is the protagonist.\u201d\u00a0 -from Max Lane\u2019s Introduction to his English-language translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer\u2019s House\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-20T14:17:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-01-29T20:26:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/10\/Max-and-Pramoedya-1981-750x598.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1388\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1106\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"alarilla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"alarilla\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/\",\"name\":\"Toer in Translation - Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/10\/Max-and-Pramoedya-1981-750x598.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-20T14:17:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-01-29T20:26:01+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/#\/schema\/person\/17980f148a38853c55c3cb1cb9a41cae\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/10\/Max-and-Pramoedya-1981-750x598.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/10\/Max-and-Pramoedya-1981-750x598.jpg\",\"width\":1388,\"height\":1106},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/toer-in-translation\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Toer in Translation\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/\",\"name\":\"Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas\",\"description\":\"Just another The Henry M. 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