Nothing wrong with multilingual govt statements, says Wan Azizah

SHAH ALAM: Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail has called on all quarters to stop politicising the issue of only using Bahasa Malaysia in official press statements.

“Though it has always been government policy to use the national language as the official language, but it is not wrong for any government statements to be translated to other languages.

“Furthermore, I see this issue of translation as something similar to when you see subtitles in movies or dramas,” Wan Azizah said when asked to comment if the Pakatan Harapan administration has made any decision in regard to retaining Bahasa Malaysia as the official language for government official duties, during the Darul Ehsan Institute Aidilfitri open house yesterday.

Recently, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had received flak from politicians and the public after he issued a statement in Chinese to support his use of trilingual statements for certain ministerial matters.

In his defence, the former Penang chief minister said there is nothing wrong for statements to be distributed in Chinese or other languages.

Lim added that he would not bow to criticism and would continue to publish his statements in dual languages, Bahasa Malaysia and English, and if necessary, a Mandarin translation will also be made available.

“I hope that other high-ranking government officials will follow suit,” he added.