Indonesian Translation

Indonesian is counted an “easy language” because it uses the Latin alphabet and its spelling is regular. That impression is misleading in official document translation: the ease is at the level of individual words, while the difficulty gathers in the vocabulary of law and in the format of identity details. Demand comes mainly from trade, energy and student files.

The structure looks simple; the legal vocabulary does not

Indonesian verbs do not change for tense and nouns take no gender, and in these respects the language runs plainly. Meaning, though, is built with affixes that attach to the front and the back of the verb, and those affixes carry the passive, causative and purposive relations in the sentence. Choosing the wrong affix changes whose obligation a contract clause describes. This is the information most often lost when Turkish passive constructions are carried into Indonesian.

A substantial part of the vocabulary of law and administration is of Dutch origin, and these terms have established forms. A term produced by working out from its Turkish equivalent will not be recognised at a notary’s office or in court. In the same way, the concepts of religion-based family law have a vocabulary of their own, and rendering them with general legal terms is wrong.

Recurring mistakes from Turkish into Indonesian

• Treating it as the same thing as Malay. The two languages are close but part company in spelling and in official terminology; a document drawn up in Indonesian may be found wanting in Malaysia, and the reverse in Indonesia.
• Flattening forms of address. Indonesian varies the way it addresses someone according to age and position; the wrong form in commercial correspondence upsets the distance between the parties.
• Applying Turkish logic to form plurals. Plurality in Indonesian is understood from context or built by reduplicating the word; marking every plural makes the text look artificial.
• Translating institution names. Indonesian bodies are known by their abbreviations, and those abbreviations are used in documents exactly as they stand.

What comes through

Document	Context	Point to watch
Supply and distributorship contract	Trade in food, textiles and machinery	Completeness of the annexes
Halal and conformity certificates	Food exports	Preservation of certificate numbers
Company formation and investment papers	Energy and infrastructure projects	Correct rendering of company-type suffixes
Diploma and academic transcript	Student and scholarship applications	Consistency of course titles
Marriage and birth records	Mixed marriages, residence permits	Name fields carried across as they stand

The documents required for food exports are the item that reaches us most often in this language. In them, substance names, certificate numbers and institution codes are preserved letter for letter; what needs translating is the explanatory text. A deviation of a single character in a number sends the application back to the beginning. The same rigour is needed for customs tariff headings: these codes are not translated but carried across untouched.

Identities without a surname

A great many people in Indonesia are registered under a single name; using a surname is not compulsory. In passports this shows up in various ways, with the surname field left blank or the same name entered in both fields. In translation we carry these fields across as they are: writing something into an empty field on our own initiative amounts to altering the person’s identity. If the institution in Türkiye asks for further detail, we explain it in a translator’s note; stating plainly which field is empty stops the official from treating the document as incomplete.

Since the Latin alphabet is used there is no transliteration problem, but in documents written under the old spelling some letters have different present-day equivalents. On a birth certificate issued years ago the name may be spelled differently from the way it appears in today’s passport; in such cases the passport spelling is what we take as authoritative, showing the older form in a translator’s note so that the institution can match the two documents. The same approach applies to the older trade registry records of companies bearing Indonesian names.

Turnaround and sending the file

Indonesian is a language with a limited but steady pool in Türkiye; commercial and personal documents come out in reasonable time, and for multi-page legal files we may ask for extra time. When you send the document, write down the target country, the institution and any term list used previously. For the fee and the delivery date, upload your document; unit rates are set out on our pricing page.

The information here is general; the level of approval required in this language differs according to the country of destination. Ask the competent authority for confirmation before you apply.