Indonesian to English Translation

This direction is used when an Indonesian document has to be submitted in an English-speaking country. The typical applicant is a student or an employee who studied in Indonesia and is applying to a university or employer in Australia, the United Kingdom, the USA or Canada; Australia’s geographical proximity concentrates this direction particularly towards the south. The document carries the Indonesian administrative order, while the authority that will read it assesses it against Anglo-Saxon culture.

Concrete examples clarify the direction: a student applying for a master’s degree in Australia with an Indonesian diploma, a family submitting the registration of a child born in Indonesia to an authority in England, a business producing the documents of an Indonesian company for an English-speaking market. What they have in common is that the document makes sense within the Indonesian system while the receiving side does not recognise it directly.

The size of Indonesia’s population and the growing tendency to study abroad keep this direction in constant demand, particularly for Australian universities; a substantial share of applicants go for an undergraduate or master’s degree and take with them an education file made up of a diploma, a transcript and course descriptions. In that file a detailed breakdown of the courses and the credits is needed from the outset, for recognition and for enrolment.

Name structure is the most critical technical point of these applications: how the name of an applicant with a single name (a mononym) is to be placed in the given name and surname fields must be resolved in the same way across all the documents; a name that appears in the given name field on one document and in the surname field on another leads the system to see two different people. The placement of the name is therefore fixed against the passport and kept throughout the file.

As Indonesia is a large archipelago, documents are issued by different provincial and regional authorities; the names of the authorities and the formats of the documents may vary by region, and each is carried into English according to its function. This variety can make two documents of the same kind look different, so the choice of terms is kept consistent with the source.

Marriage and birth records may be issued through two channels, religious and civil; the nature of the authority on the document is stated explicitly in the translation, because the English-speaking authority wants to see which official record the document rests on. As the date is given in day-month-year order, the month is written out in letters in the English translation.

In education documents, the names of schools and universities are given in their official form where an English version exists, and otherwise in their original name with an explanation. The consistent rendering of the name and of institution names across documents belonging to the same person prevents contradictions arising during recognition and enrolment.

Technical issues specific to Indonesian into English

The most striking problem in this pair is name structure: many Indonesians have a single name (a mononym), while others have more than one name, none of which functions as a surname. Since English forms make the distinction between given name and surname compulsory, how a single name is to be shown is determined from the fields in the passport; no artificial surname is invented, and the same form is kept across all the documents.

As Indonesian uses the Latin alphabet there is no transliteration problem, but the old orthography left over from the Dutch period (oe, dj, tj) may appear in some names; in that case the current spelling in the passport is taken as the basis. The Indonesian date format uses day-month-year order, and writing the month out in letters in the English translation prevents confusion.

Indonesian institution and document names are carried into English according to their function; even administrative terms borrowed from English are used correctly in the target context. Registry and file numbers are not translated but given as a reference to the record.

Indonesian has a simplified grammar and forms the plural by reduplication; this structure is resolved according to context when it is carried into English. The official seal and registration details in the document are kept in place.

Which documents call for this direction

• Diplomas (ijazah), transcripts and course descriptions
• Birth, marriage and family records (kartu keluarga)
• Employment, service and criminal record documents
• Bank and income documents (for a student visa)
• Company and commercial documents

Student applications form the backbone of demand; a detailed breakdown of the courses and the credits is required for recognition and enrolment. For people with a single name, showing the name field in the same way across all the documents is critical to the coherence of the application.

In family records the consistent rendering of kinship relationships and of names is necessary for the English-speaking authority to match the document. In commercial files the names of the parties and the company types are given in their original form.

Chain of certification

Because the destination is an English-speaking country, no sworn translator system comes into play: the USA and the United Kingdom ask for a signed statement of accuracy, Canada for a translator registered with a provincial association or an affidavit, Australia for NAATI accreditation. Since the apostille and attestation position for documents coming from Indonesia may vary with current practice, it should be confirmed from an official source.

For these differing expectations, look at the certification regime of the destination country and the document type requirements. Tell us the fields of the name in the passport and the destination institution before you send the document.

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