SPN: minggat

[whynot]

I was contemplating maybe holding off on posting this until I actually wrote a real fic out of it, but I mean. This is pretty much just 300ish words of language practice and composition exercise, so I wanna keep it low-pressure. Finding my sea legs, if the sea were Bahasa Indonesia.

As it is right now, it's just the beginning of some casefic. Again, feel free to point out my grammar/phrasing/slang errors. I would like my Indonesian to improve!



Dean bangun sendirian.

'Gak apa-apa, deh. Pasti Sam lagi beli sarapan. Dean mengirim text ke Sam -- 'beliin donat dong' -- dan masuk kamar mandi, cuci, gosok gigi, cukur. Bahunya masih pegal karena perkelahian dengan vampir-vampir kemarin, tapi ya, itu sudah biasa.

Yang tidak biasa adalah ini: Dean melihat keluar jendela, dan mobilnya masih ada di tempat parkir. Motel ini sama sekali tidak dekat restoran ataupun toserba. Yang dekat cuma jalan tol saja.

Jadi Sam kemana?

Dean coba menelepon, tapi Sam tidak menjawab. Dia mencari sekeliling motel: tidak ada. Menanya resepsionis: maaf, saya tidak melihatnya. Di tempat parkir, ada seorang membawa koper ke kamarnya -- Hey, bung! Kamu lihat laki-laki setinggi ini, rambut coklat agak panjangan? Tidak? Oke, trims.

Dean kembali ke kamar dan tiba-tiba menyadari: baju-baju Sam tidak ada. Tasnya, komputernya, buku-bukunya. Semua yang dimiliki Sam tidak ada.

Oke. Oke, jangan panik. Ini belum--ini bukan waktunya panik. Sam, dasar brengsek, memangnya dia mau pergi kemana? Kenapa?

Dean menelepon Cas, dan si malaikat menjawab setelah satu deringan. "Dean."

"Cas! 'Loe sibuk?"

"Ya. Aku mencari--"

"Bokapmu, ya, oke. Cas, Sam nggak ada."

"Apa maksudmu?"

"Dia menghilang. Kabur atau apa, 'gak tahu. Aku perlu bantuanmu, nih."

"Kamu yakin Sam tidak ada?"

"Sangat yakin, Cas, karena Sam tidak ada disini. Barangnya 'gak disini. Dia minggat!"

"Ini bisa bahaya," kata Cas. "Sendirian, Lucifer akan lebih gampang menekamnya."

"Sam nggak jawab teleponnya."

Dan tiba-tiba, Cas berada di depan Dean. Setengah meter di depan Dean, karena malaikat mungkin agak tolol kalau dibilangin 'jangan berdiri terlalu dekat'. Rambutnya agak berantakan, seperti biasa, dan dia kelihatan kecapaian. Kalau lagi mencari Tuhan, memangnya harus cari kemana? Dean tidak pernah terlalu bertanya tentang Ayahnya si Cas. Sopan santun, sih. Dean juga tidak suka kalau orang terlalu bertanya tentang John. Tapi Cas kok kelihatannya agak lemah sejak Carthage, dan Dean penasaran.

Cas berkata dengan serius, "Selamat pagi, Dean."

"Cas," keluh Dean, "kadang-kadang aku bener-bener benci adikku."

Si malaikat mengangguk, "Keluarga kadang-kadang susah."

Comments

[scaramouche]

I'm sorry, I have nothing useful to in regards to this exercise of this fic. On the whole, it made me tingle in my happy place (which is in my chest, and nowhere else), my brain doing a funny thing where my deeply-ingrained language association with the SPN'verse is shattered to smithereens.

I got caught on the simple use of "malaikat" to describe Cas. It's a direct translation, true, but my own personal context is completely different. For me, malaikat are completely genderless and even more non-human in their different from humans, though I think this is more to my own association of the word "angel" with its pop culture connotations, so to have Cas described as much turned my mental image of Cas completely on its head, and that makes me happy. Very happy indeed.

[whynot]

deeply-ingrained language association with the SPN'verse
Hee! I enjoyed the writing of this partly for the crazy things it did to this association too! Dean calling people 'bung' and 'loe'. I just found this Blogspot repository of Indonesian SPN fanfic today, and I am still kind of reeling and going omgomg.

Hmm, interesting! What word would you have used for Cas instead of malaikat?

[scaramouche]

Hmm, interesting! What word would you have used for Cas instead of malaikat?

There isn't another word. Malaikat is correct.

My brain works like this: The lore of the SPN'verse, told in English, has Christianity as a default. Malay/Indonesian words of religion, in general, I've mentally defaulted to Islam (which is problematic, I know), so when I read this fic using those particular words, I am parsing Castiel as a completely different creature from SPN lore.

Also, what horusporus said: Dean's grumbling sounds even more awesome in Indonesian.

[layne67]

Pardon me for butting in but hi, fellow Malaysian and fellow SPN fan here. I'm just amazed that SPN even managed to get through the censorship board when you know, it borders on the blasphemy and all. Watching SPN nowadays I simply have to get into this headspace that this is Kripke's angels and Kripke's God because otherwise it's a tad, well, a lot actually, uncomfortable!

[scaramouche]

HI, M'SIANS REPRESENT!

The thing about our censorship board is that you really can't predict what they're going to care about and what they won't. I was totally shocked when Legion made the cinemas here, because that movie's totally about angels and Heaven and Hell and whatnot. The Keanu Reeves Constantine, too, when it comes to that.

[horusporus]

Dean grumbling sounds massively better in Indonesian, ahahaha!

[whynot]

XD What I would love, since I'm from west Java, is for him to occasionally slip into Sunda unthinkingly.

[horusporus]

That would be awesome, though I'd prolly need subtitles. ^^;;

(anyway your ficlet is an example of what I meant as parallel linguistic development - for me, this is definitely not Malay, and though I can understand and follow it, because grammatically it is still similar plus the shared roots, but the basic cadence and sentence construction that you employ wouldn't be the one that I would use, what more the differences in how each country's language institution choose to 'normalise' loan words. Heck even basic vocabulary. We're actually at the point of diverging into two separate dialects. Trufax, nowadays Indonesian dramas are shown here with subtitles. ahaha, poor nationalist-linguists of yore... their Melayu Raya/Indonesia Raya is not meant to be)

Now I'm tempted to do a Malay-language ficlet aaaa.

[whynot]

My Sunda's abysmal, but I can definitely see him saying "dahar euy!" (roughly translates to "food time!" or "awesome, food!" or like "let's eat!") before digging into some take-out.

Yeah, when I listen to Malay, I definitely hear a different music. Reading Malay, there is a different rhythm, and sometimes I'm snagged on the verbal tics -- "la" versus "lho". And vocabulary, yeah; when I was a kid, my family and I visited Malaysia and we'd try to speak in Indonesian, but it got complicated and it was easier for everyone to communicate in English. I've always wondered what the relationship between Indonesian and Malaysian is because of that, too similar to be each other's dialect, but not different enough to be a different language from each other. Fraternal twins, perhaps?

I hear Indonesians refer to Malaysia as 'negeri jiran' sometimes. What does that term mean to Malaysians?

You should write it! :)

[horusporus]

ha, considering the recent developments in the .id/.my relationship, 'negeri jiran' is downright neutral (it'd mean 'neighbour state', but negeri is considered sub of negara, and in modern Malay now, nation-states are exclusively negara while negeri is for provinces or region-states, though your average proficient Malay speaker would remember it used to be interchangeable so there's the benefit of the doubt.)

As it is, the current popular epithet from Indonesians to Malaysians is that we're Malingsia (frm the Jawa word for thief) because we've been stealing the culture you see. It's kinda like M'sians being upset at Singaporeans for marketing curry laksa as exclusively theirs for example. XDXD

Now, I don't remember the linguistical history and background very well, but if we are as you say, fraternal, it occured not in utero. XD As far as I see it, the current situation is due societal development versus institutionalised control. Fact is, the linguists-nationalists back then were committed to the idea of an Indonesia Raya or Melayu Raya, so there was concerted attempt to make uniform the languages (which wasn't hard at the outset because B.Indonesia is as much a nationalist construct, a 'new' language if you will, much like Filipino, and so was Malay). But joint initiatives fell at the wayside I guess, and the two countries' linguistic character developed differently, no doubt due to their colonial background too.

On Indonesia's side, there's the Dutch history (which influenced normalisation of English/Western loanwords, like... universitas, or fasilisitas), the fact that you have a way more vibrant and thriving translation industry, no doubt spurred by the language homogeneity (or something like that - basically Indonesians just speak more Indonesian), the fact that the main Indonesian is influenced by Javanese due to the location of the capital. And &c &c

On Malaysia's side, there's the English history, the fact that that for the Peninsula at least there is substantial number of non-nusantara minorities, so that's a whole different culture and language(s), and while efforts are made in making Malay the national language, colonial history has long made English the de facto lingua franca. Which then relates to the slovenly translation industry (where's the market when the market is mostly functionally bilingual?)

whoa tl;dr.... okay cue for me to sleep...!

[whynot]

re: Malingsia. HAHAHA OMG WHAT that is terible. Yeah, what was the latest thing we fought over, wasn't it some folk song or whatever? Are we still fighting over silat? XD

where's the market when the market is mostly functionally bilingual?
This! Yeah, I'm not sure if I buy the thrive of the Indonesian translation industry. I wrote a little bit about this in my most recent post. A lot of Indonesia is functionally bilingual too.

[horusporus]

the last-most thing (aside from the very relevant and legitimate issue of the treatment of domestic help) was not even Malaysia's fault. Some dude at Discovery channel or something, were cutting an ad for Malaysia, and used stock video of the Balinese kechak dance. Sampai naik parlimen wooo (yours lah :D). It got to a point that supposedly this fringe group called Bendera claimed tht it's got it's people ready to ganyang Malaysia again. The trolls in the M'sian online-world were very disappointed when the supposed day came and we didn't kena ganyang. Anyway, yeah, got more than a few FB anti-M'sia groups as well, out of that.

re: bilinguality - that's an interesting and true point. You are more familiar with it so I'll take your word for it, but I will say, comparatively the Malaysian translation market is more lethargic. :D

[whynot]

The funny thing is that the kecak dance is not traditional in the traditional sense, haha. Some bule and a local Javanese dance artist created the dance to entertain tourists, a bunch of ages ago. Not to say that it's not a significant part of Indonesian culture though, 'cos now it totally is. XD

[horusporus]

HAHAHAH THAT JUST FIGURES. XDXD

[whynot]

Doesn't it? And by Javanese, I mean Balinese. Further research reveals the names to be Wayan Limbak and Walter Spies, cobbling together bits of Balinese culture to make this spectacle.

[tevere]

Man, it's been so long since I've watched or read any SPN. Cas is looking for God? For reals? Hee.

Something I've often noticed about Indonesian fiction (and non-fiction, even), is that stylistically it's quite different from English. I'm not even talking about grammar, but the way thoughts/ideas are expressed. The way the emphasis falls on certain parts of the text. Just thinking back on it now, I think more tends to be in the passive voice, thoughts tend to be more-- meandering?-- and it's really common for epithets to be used instead of proper names. I remember it used to drive me nuts-- I mean, how long has everyone in fandom spent trying to stop people writing 'the long-haired taller brother' when just 'Sam' would do? Except it seems to be quite normal in Indonesian-- a way of shoehorning more information into the text, maybe.

[whynot]

Haha, maybe I should warn for spoilers. ;)

That's interesting. I haven't read Indonesian in a while, so I can't comment. I just remember a gut reaction of thinking about how formal and stilted it felt, but I figured it was probably just translation issues.

[layne67]

This is actually good you know. I'm very much entertained by it, syabas!

[whynot]

'Ma kasih, yo! That means a lot.

'Syabas' itu artinya apa?

[layne67]

Literally it means congrats but it's meant to be "Well done!"

[scaramouche]

Whoops, my turn to butt in -- syabas is a Malay word but I believe it comes from Hindi or at least another South Asian equivalent, because that word gets used a lot in Hindi films, to the point where a Malaysian pop culture joke uses the line, "Syabas, beti, syabas" in the tone of the Hindi film villain wryly/sarcastically congratulating the heroine of the film. For example, I could do something stupid, and horusporus would clap and say: "Syabas, beti, syabas."

Just to clarify: I'm not saying that layne67 is using the word that way. ^^;; That's just an anecdote of another usage I thought you might be interested in.