Making BM a language of knowledge without neglecting English

THE ongoing discourse on Bahasa Melayu has attracted many views. The social media has been hyperactive about the topic. Some question why the use of Bahasa Melayu is not widespread in the country, and others ponder why it is not used in international meetings.

Many countries use their mother tongue. China uses Mandarin in international communique, India uses Hindi and France uses French.

The issue has often been raised. Lately, there has been intense debate with many people poking fun at some of our leaders who do not communicate well in English.

All of a sudden, the language policy is changed. Government servants, for example, have been told to use Bahasa Melayu or face the consequences.

Why do we always take a kneejerk reaction to issues? Essentially, what we truly desire is to make Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge.

We know many other countries have been doing that. Japan has been consistent in making Japanese a language of knowledge. It has achieved that through making available Japanese translations of literally all the world knowledge repository. This is irrespective of whether the knowledge is developed in Japan or elsewhere.

China, South Korea and Germany and most other countries also see knowledge as a priceless asset for the people.

Indonesia has been translating books and other materials into Bahasa Indonesia. But they do not neglect the need to master other languages, especially English, which is a global language of communication.

Over the years, Indonesia has transformed Bahasa Indonesia into a language of knowledge, and also improved the mastery of English.

On our part, we cannot claim to have done the same. We tried embarking on one such journey in the 1970s. The government launched an ambitious project to make Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge.

I remember that Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) was tasked with anchoring the project.

Many of us then were just back from our studies with a degree and itching to get a taste of work. Unlike these days, jobs were more or less guaranteed for graduates then.

I joined the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia. Some colleagues became university lecturers. But all of us met regularly as we were part of DBP’s science translation committee.

I was in a group in charge of chemistry, where we translated scientific terms from English to Malay. We used the terms available in Bahasa Indonesia as a guide. I was paid a RM10 meeting allowance!

Those days, we were serious about making Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge. The government allocated funds to translate science materials into Malay.

Public universities, including Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, actively used Bahasa Melayu in their programmes.

Sadly, as with most of our initiatives, the policy to make Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge could not be sustained in the long run. The funding dried up and the dream was never realised.

Now, the topic has being raised again. If we are truly serious about making Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge, we need proper planning and commitment.

However, in the process of making Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge, we must not abandon the aspiration to make our people multilingual.

Apart from English, which is spoken widely around the world, we should promote the learning of Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic and Spanish, among others.

We should not forget the fact that we are a trading nation. The more countries we communicate with, the better our chances of building business networks.

Like it or not, English is an international language. Making Bahasa Melayu a language of knowledge must not be at the expense of mastering English.